Juggernaut
by Asuka
Summary: A figure from Testament's past has a plan for a dire chess game that involves several pawns, Justice not the least of them. Chapter 7 added, after a long hiatus.
1. Bad Moon Rising

**TITLE**: _Juggernaut_  
**THEME**: "Megalomanic" by KMFDM  
**RATED**: PG-13 for dark themes, violence, some slight situations, and language. I may have to change this to R, which means you'll have to search for it since FF.Net's default settings only go to PG-13... X_x  
**TYPE**: Multipart, serialized fic.  
**GENRE**: Drama  
**SUMMARY**: Yeah, well, this is probably your usual premise. But I rather liked the idea. Thanks to my good friend Rigelle for collaboration, along with my best friend IRL, a massive Guilty Gear fan like myself (though she isn't on FF.Net :P). So. Onward! XD; Takes place pretty much right after the ending of GGX and before the beginning of GGXX. Constructive criticism is good, because I know this story probably took a loaded Beretta and shot continuity in the head. x_x Flames and ridicule are welcome as I will just point and laugh, but just remember: my first piece of crap on this section is proof in the pudding that I can always do much worse. Action or sap? It's your choice, children. ^^; Having said that, there's _very_ slight Anji/Baiken hints here, but nothing sappy. Enjoy!

**::chapter one - bad moon rising::**  
  


++++++++++++++++++++++++

_"I see a bad moon a-rising, I see trouble on the way..."_

--Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Bad Moon Rising"

++++++++++++++++++++++++

--THE MAYSHIP: ST. GERMAIN DOCKS, FRANCE--

"Dizzy, this is April, my chief advisor. April, this is Dizzy. May and I picked her up on our way back." 

Johnny cast a sidewise glance at the demure young woman at his side. Her wings and tail were concealed for the time being, but what little he could see of her downturned face was as deathly pale as Testament's had been. The clasped hands at her slender waist trembled fearfully - though almost below perception. Despite his repeated reassurances on their way to the dock, she was obviously terrified at the prospect of meeting and associating with humans. Ever since they had entered the port city, the innocent Gear had practically glued herself to Johnny's side, her hand clutching his arm in a painful and half-panicked grip.

Not that he could blame her, really, not after everything she'd suffered.

In an effort to calm her he laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and patted. "She'll help you get used to the way things work around here, and she and May are in charge when I'm not around, so maybe the two of you should get to know each other?" 

April didn't miss the meaningful expression on the captain's face, and quickly smiled. "Don't worry about her, Johnny. I'll make sure she learns the ropes around here, and I'm sure May can take care of her..." Her alto voice was direct and friendly as she offered a hand. "It's really great to meet you, Dizzy. Welcome aboard."

Dizzy finally lifted her head, her crimson eyes flickering with uncertainty as she stared at April's hand, then accepted it and tried to smile, the rare action stretching her lips a bit and quivering at the corners. "I... um, thank you... I'll do my best."

"Hey, don't worry about it, okay? We're all in the same boat here - no pun intended, of course." Johnny chuckled a bit at his own joke, then assumed a more brisk manner as he addressed the pirate girl once more. "April, you said you checked the tanks. Do we need to stop in Zepp and refuel?"

"No, sir. Everything's accounted for."

"Great. We're lifting off in fifteen, then. I'll go let the crew know."

"I'll come with you, Johnny," May piped, swinging her anchor over her shoulder, but he shook his head. "Aww, come on! Please?"

"I need you to take Dizzy to her new room. She needs some clothes. April and you can show her where everything is on the ship."

May's face drew itself into a petulant sulkiness that, despite all the girl's vehement arguments for being 'grown up', was proof that she still had a little work to do in that department. "But I wanna go with you, Johnny!"

Johnny shook his head and sighed, then leaned down and drew her to one side as he murmured in her ear. "Dizzy's still very frightened, May. Remember when we first found Evelyn?"

"Evie? Yeah, sure I do. Her aunt got killed when those Gears knocked down their village..." That had been seven years ago, during a stopover in Russia, and she barely remembered it, except that Johnny had come back in need of medical attention while bearing a small, crying dark-haired girl over his shoulder. She'd been afraid of her own shadow, and even though May had only been about eight or so she could clearly remember that Evelyn couldn't speak at all. For nearly a year, the girl had been mute. Then all of a sudden she just started speaking as if she'd always done so. "I was just a little kid then."

He bit back the obvious response to that addendum, then shook his head. "Dizzy's afraid that people will hate her because she's a Gear, and it's a very real fear. She trusts you, though, so stay by her and be her friend. If she relaxes, she'll be fine. Got it? Do it for me, May," Johnny added as an afterthought, turning on the charm. Okay, so that last part was just the tiniest bit blatant, but it inevitably worked on the bouncy teenager. Her chocolate eyes lit up like candles on a birthday cake.

"Okay, sure!"  
  
"That's my girl." He grinned, doffed his hat to the trio of girls, then made his way towards the bridge. In the background he heard the upward inflexion of May's cheerful soprano voice - no doubt she was now half-dragging poor Dizzy to one of the guest rooms.

***********************

--SHIROKU COLONY: GALICIA, SPAIN--

"So then the silly bastard tried to run from it. Imagine that, running from a dragon. And guess who got left to kill the thing and clean up the mess?"

"His fault for not listening to you."

"No one listens to me, Baiken." A nonchalant shrug. "I'm used to it."

"Obviously not. You don't have the common sense the gods gave a cockroach."

"This coming from a broad who looks like fifty miles of bad road." He studied the woman seated across from him with a mockingly clinical golden eye, a fang slipping free at the corner of his mouth as he grinned at her. "Nice rack, though."

A smirk wrinkled the corners of the woman's face, stretching the scar covering the hollow space where her eye had once been even as she lifted her hand to tuck a few cerise strands behind her ear. "Shut up and drink, Sol. You make me look bad enough as it is, associating with a no-account like you..."

"Your choice to invite me in, wasn't it?" The bounty hunter released one of his rare chuckles. Sol Badguy was a stoic and no-nonsense sort, preferring action to blather, but Baiken was one of the few people he could actively like as opposed to simply tolerating her. Therefore, she was possibly the only one who could carry on a decent conversation with him without getting offended. She got more emotional over things than he did, but hell, she was only human. It was expected. Besides, she could drink him under the table, he noted critically, glancing at all the empty bottles surrounding her. "Jesus riverdancing Christ, woman. Your liver must've already said to hell with it and committed ritual suicide by now. Look at all that shit."

"You get used to it after awhile."

"Where's your little fan-wielding boy toy, by the way?" He reached into one of the pockets of his jeans and produced a lighter and a half-finished pack of cigarettes.

"Oh, Mito? Hell if I know. He sneaked out of the colony again a couple nights ago. Hasn't been back and I haven't seen him since Saturday last."

"Any ideas?" A flare of light and the acrid scent of burning tobacco, not as pleasant as the smell of her pipe but comforting in its familiarity nonetheless.

"Why're you so curious?"

Sol Badguy shrugged with an almost arrogant casualness. "Because if we're going to have wild kinky sex, sweetheart, I don't want him walking in on it."

"Not even in your dreams, Badguy." Baiken closed her remaining eye as she released a puff of smoke from her own pipe. Translation for _that_ bit of smartassery probably was, Sol had his own reasons and didn't want to disclose them. None of her business, whatever it was. "My guess is, he's gone to talk to Testament again."

"That jackass?" Sol snorted. He didn't bother to filter the derision from his voice. While Ky Kiske's constant hounding to "settle the score" did little other than annoy him, Justice's former right hand was a different prospect - the prototype Gear disliked him immensely. Then again, the feeling was mutual. The chief annoyance for Sol was that he could never quite bring himself to kill the former Crusader; something inevitably stayed his hand whenever he had the chance to do it... maybe it was his humanity whining and bitching again. 

Or maybe, it was because Testament's predicament was basically his fault.

"Anji seems to like him for some reason. Besides, he has it in his head that Testament may know where to find that man. I doubt it, though."

"Think so?"

"His memory of becoming a Gear is just bits and pieces. Guess it's something he tried to forget about..."

"Yeah." Sol could relate to Testament on _that_ issue, at least. Unfortunately he remembered quite well that the transformation wasn't exactly a fun-filled and enjoyable experience, though he doubted that he and Testament were the only humans who'd suffered it - The Man (as he was called) had already been trying to find a way to use the technology for human augmentation when Sol had decided that he was in the middle of a hostile work environment. And of course, he had taken it upon himself to find other employment opportunities, so he'd simply left without notice. As far as Sol knew, they were still trying to find a way to make a Gear serum that didn't have such detrimental effects on mental stability - most humans changed during the Crusades went incurably insane both because the trauma was so massive and because Justice had immediately extended the "mankind erasure" command to include them. 

Hell, he was lucky he didn't have more issues than he did. 

_And that's another reason why I've gotta find that bastard and get rid of him. Before he does this shit to someone else..._

Baiken noted the grim expression on Sol's face, half-hidden even as it fluttered almost imperceptibly across her friend's hooded eyes. Perceptive if nothing else, she leaned back casually while changing the subject. "So you gonna finish that drink or what?"

"I ain't giving it to you. Damn lush." 

"Heh. You gonna go to Neo-Madrid, check your mark list?"

"Probably. In a little while." He glanced at Baiken. "I'm surprised you aren't wandering around out there yourself."

"Eh, I don't hate this place as much as Anji does, and I figure it'd be best to lay low for awhile anyway. Word that I'm looking for the man who created the Gears might get back to the wrong quarters. And I take any opportunity to train." There weren't any interruptions on the reservation the way there might be elsewhere.

"True." Sol abruptly picked himself up from the comfortable worn spot on the cushion. "Think I might go on over to Madrid now, actually. Ever since I let that kid go in the forest, there hasn't been any mention of her."

"That kid? You mean the Gear girl?"

"Yeah."

Baiken chuckled. "Checking up on her, huh?"

"Whatever. You accusing me of going soft?"

"You _are_ soft, Badguy. You're just too much of a hardass to admit it."

The bounty hunter shot her a pointed glare that would have made most people back off very quickly. However, the mistress of this household had been weathered and hardened by war, a lifetime of it. Very little if anything fazed her anymore, and Sol knew it. "You tell anyone, Seishino, and I'll skin you alive."

"You're all empty promises. Tell Mito I said get his ass back over here if you see him."

Sol smirked as he slipped his hands in his pockets and stepped out the door, taking a long drag from the cigarette which still dangled from his lips, and headed for the checkpoint. From there was Madrid.

*******************************

--AIRSHIP WHARF NUMBER TWO: PARIS, FRANCE--

Near-frantic gales of laughter erupted from a couple stumbling out of the small riverside tavern: the tallest a man in a wrinkled work shirt and faded jeans. He was flanked on his left by a tall slim woman with long violet-black hair and strange striking amber eyes, her forehead covered and hair bound in a silken red kerchief. The long skeins were looped and molded into intricate braids save a few soft curls drifting over the back of her neck, the cloth of the headpiece matching her rather low-cut spaghetti-strap dress and thigh-high heeled vinyl boots. Attractive in a strange way, though the glimmer in her eyes was hardly one of mirth, or of any healthy human emotion.

The Seine was even now grievously polluted - some things never changed, not even with the long-ago advent of magic technology - and the unpleasant smell of raw sewage and dumped trash drifted on a weak, unhealthy stirring of air current. However, the olfactory assault only wrinkled the nostrils of the female; the man at her side was horrendously drunk, a nameless bounty hunter who'd come in looking for a good time. She'd inwardly recoiled in disgust, but outwardly maintained her silky, pleasant facade as she tittered at his alcohol-induced attempts at wit and catered to his maudlin sighing over his difficult line of work and the high levels of competition.

"Like tryin' to get that damn Gear," he'd slurred irritably, waving a hand and coming dangerously close to overturning his sixth bottle of beer. Some humans, she'd found, had an amazingly high tolerance for poisoning their own bodies; it'd been her sour observance on more than one occasion that Master Justice might not have even needed to declare war on the parasites. Wait another hundred years, and they might have simply wiped themselves out of their own volition. "World Court made that announcement 'bout the bounty and course I went for it. One Gear in the world's one too many, I always say. But I'll be damned if every half-assed kid, old man, and girlie from here to fuckin' Antarctica didn't jump on it too. I mean, th'hell? How'm I supposed to make a living if I gotta compete with thousands of other silly bastards for the cash?"

She'd made the proper noises of commiseration, but really her job was of a completely different purpose. After a bit of probing - humans were pathetically easy to gain information from when they were inebriated - he'd told her what she'd wanted to know. And now they were strolling out here in the smelly rundown waterfront district towards a nameless hotel room; he'd just assumed she was one of the "pleasure women" that frequented the Paris slums.

"But I know where the little demon is, baby," he crowed as he leaned towards her, planting a rather sloppy kiss just below her earlobe. "I know damn well where it is. I got leads, know what I'm sayin'? Hell of it is, I'm not sure if I can actually get to it."

"Why not?"

"There's some kinda trap it planted," the hunter mumbled, jabbing a finger at nothing in particular. "They're sayin' that there's another Gear protectin' it - a huge strappin' male who looks like Death in a skirt, even got himself a scythe bigger'n he is. I hear he's already killed a bunch of people who get too close to where the big prize is. If I weren't hard up for cash I sure as hell wouldn't be riskin' my ass. They say it usually happens over... St. Germain way. Me, I'm an American. All these frog names sound the same to me, but least I know I'm gettin' close. I'll bring down that buck, though. Might even bring his head back 'long with the other one's when I go to Geneva to get the money. Hell, maybe I'll take his scythe, too." A drunken, triumphant laugh. "No Gear ever got past me durin' the Crusades, honey. Not Marcus 'Wind Rider' Berkman, no way in hell. I was a merc workin' for the Knights, y'know, till that Frenchy kid came on board and they tried to pass him off as the leader. Screw that, I said, jumped ship and been workin' for myself ever since. It don't matter though, I didn't need the Knights. I been killin' Gears since I was fourteen and run away from home. There's a trick to it, y'see..."

They had left the lighted area in front of the tavern, and now approached an alleyway perhaps a block south. With a wicked little giggle and no warning at all, the woman grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him roughly against the brick wall behind them, wrapping her arms about his neck. As she did so she cast him a sly, seductive smile, amber eyes twinkling with an almost predatory glint beneath long violet lashes that had never seen mascara. Feeling the stirrings of uneasiness even in his drunken gaze, the hunter initially squirmed - but his protest quickly faded when she kissed him with a great show of enthusiasm, her tongue effortlessly nudging his lips open and sliding over his teeth. With a low growling chuckle he responded in kind, his arms wrapping about her lissome waist and tugging her roughly forwards.

He broke the kiss and grinned blearily at her, lust now creeping into his eyes. "Took me by surprise for a sec - thought you were gonna eat me alive or somethin'. You're real good, honey."

"So I've been told." One of her arms dropped from his perch to her side while the other one idly toyed with the soft spot behind his ear, her slow smile full of inviting promise. Far below his already dulled perception, her hand crept slowly into the voluminous purse on her shoulder, closing about the smooth wooden hilt of an unseen object and pulling it out. "You might catch that Gear, though. You said none of them who found you've ever gotten past you, huh?"

"That's what they say." 

"Well, you know..." She smirked as her hand left its teasing to tilt his head so that he gazed directly into her eyes... saw to her delight his shock as the pupils of her eyes contracted and elongated, becoming twin vertical slits. 

Before he could respond, she plunged the serrated edge of her barbed knife into his gut and dragged it slowly upwards, relishing the stiffening of his body as the first threads of pain registered themselves in his brain. The hunter's eyes, as expected, flared wide with surprise and agony. Suddenly quite sober, he opened his mouth to shriek - but not before the woman plunged forward and fastened her mouth over his once more in the appearance of a second lustful embrace. 

As she felt liquid running freely over her fingers she also felt the strength and breath to make any sound leave him. With a mocking little laugh she whispered her response against his trembling lips - probably the last ones he would ever hear. She could already sense the metallic taste of blood on her tongue as she simply let him sink to the ground, ripping her weapon from his sternum.

"...they also say there's a first time for everything, human."

And with a grin, the Gear strode off casually into the darkness, her lithe form wreathed in shadow before being completely overtaken by the pitch-black of the silent, moonless night.

****************************

**AUTHOR'S NOTES**: Call this little ditty a celebration fic for GGXX's final porting to an English console - this means I no longer have to spend precious quarters playing the import in UTA's arcade (which I have been doing since June, sadly). Even though it so completely rocks. *_* Poor Zappa. He's *SPOILER* looking for a cure for his condition under the mistaken belief that he's suffering from a rare illness - has no idea he's possessed by a woman who Faust killed as Dr. Baldhead. AND, he's a reference to The Ring (the girl's name is S-ko - Sadako), and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure series 3. Dig the Dio Brando hearts, baby. XD;; 

Reputed Gear I-no (the agent of The Man, who Ishiwatari-sempai is rumored to reveal possibly in the next game - or novel, though I still need to get off my ass and read "Butterfly and her Gale") and Sol have possibly the funniest entrance EVER. I know she's sadistic like no one's business, yes. But I have a special place in my respect list for a villain who has no illusions whatsoever about herself or her nature. Either way, I am so first in line to pay the difference on my reserved copy when that game comes out. \*_*/ Muah! 


	2. The Blessing in Solitude

**::chapter two - the blessing in solitude::**

++++++++++++++++++++++++

_"Screaming to an emptiness  
Of how we once defined ourselves  
With our hands over our eyes  
Claiming all of creation._

"Can someone see our self destruction?  
Are we reminding ourselves  
That our existence is  
So delicate  
That without this light we are no more..."

--VNV Nation, "Carbon"

++++++++++++++++++++++++

--AIRSHIP WHARF NUMBER TWO (CRIME SCENE): PARIS, FRANCE--

It was perhaps three-thirty in the morning, but it felt much later.

The Criminal Investigation Division of the Central Paris GPF had been on the site for what seemed like hours. Dozens of bleary-eyed men and women in the standard navy drab cloaks of the Global Police Force scoured the remote street, taking bits and pieces of nearly everything that could be considered evidence, speaking to the shocked patrons and employees at the small tavern a mere block away. None of them had seen anything untoward. 

There were only three viable eyewitnesses: One was a bartender who had seen the victim leaving with an attractive dark-haired woman in red who appeared to be in her mid-twenties, surely no older. Other than that, he'd said, there hadn't been anything particularly unusual. That sort of thing happened all the time, people coming and going - usually the various women with their clients of the moment. 

Ky Kiske didn't find that surprising in the least. The Crusades had brought local law enforcement grinding to a standstill as most effort was put towards a more widescale, immediate threat. In its absence, petty crime had become rampant - prostitution being one of them. And since many of the Knights had taken advantage of that service throughout the years (Ky had of course highly disapproved, but he couldn't be everyone's morality)... well. He'd done his best to try and shut the established houses down since joining the force, but since this tavern wasn't per se a so-called "house of ill repute", there wasn't much he could do to them, other than have himself a nice long conversation with the proprietor about condoning illegal activity.

He was currently interviewing one of the other two eyewitnesses, this one the trembling and shocked young prostitute who'd stumbled across the corpse. Her client, a man in his late thirties, had been the one to call the police. The former Seikishidan commander literally had to force himself to stare at her face - looking anywhere below her neck (albeit out of some sort of morbid fascination) was causing a bright crimson blush to creep up his fair cheeks. He knew it wasn't visible in the darkness - tonight was a new moon, so the only lights they had were their own - but still, it was the _principle_ of the matter. Even if he was almost twenty-five years old, it wasn't as if he should use his age to justify tolerating this sort of behavior. Besides, he wasn't used to women who showed so much strategically placed flesh...

"I don't know," she wailed when he gently asked her if she'd seen anyone at all in the area when she had found the body. Her face was caked in makeup, and Kiske suspected she was much younger than she'd taken pains to appear. "I just thought maybe someone had knocked over a dustbin... but when we got closer there was a funny smell like metal, and the man with me had a lighter in his pocket and flicked it on to see what it was, and there was that guy just laying there and his chest had been ripped open and... and _things_ were coming out... I don't know... maybe his guts or something... oh God, I feel sick, I think I'm gonna throw up..."

She _did_ look the tiniest bit pale, so Ky quickly motioned one of his men over and asked the man to escort their witness back to the inn. As soon as she was gone, he lifted his own flashlight and headed back to the meticulously taped-off scene - mercifully the body had been covered pending the arrival of the city coroner. He had to say that he honestly couldn't blame the girl for feeling the way she did. The murder had been a gruesome one, and the third in the last week. All of them had followed the same pattern so far: a dark-haired woman walking out with a man perhaps five to ten years older. The victims had all been disemboweled, all discovered with their facial expressions frozen in glazed shock. 

The French policeman sighed, glancing away from the gory tableau and swiping his forearm across his brow. The mist that crept about them in thin tendrils had become oppressive as well as chilly, and strands of tawny hair had pasted themselves to his face.

_Holy Mother of God, I hope we don't have a serial killer on our hands..._

Ky was afraid, however, that a serial killer was exactly what they _were_ dealing with. Especially when considering that so far, all the victims had been of a certain type... and even more strangely, all of them had been bounty hunters - all looking for the Gear with the handsome price on its head. He had little doubt that this man would fit the pattern as well.

"Captain?" A discreet tap on his shoulder startled Kiske out of his exhausted ruminations, to offer a momentarily blank stare to the young woman who'd spoken. She gestured to the fatigued-looking man at her side, barely taller than she. "This is Dr. Louis Charpentier from the coroner's office."

"_Bonsoir_," came the abrupt reply as the little man thrust a hand forward. "I came as soon as I could."

"Thank you. I'm sorry to wake you at such a terrible hour..."

"It's part of the job," Charpentier said, waving a hand dismissively. "It's the same as the last two, right?"

"Yes. Disembowelment, white male, somewhere between 25 and 35 years old."

The coroner nodded. "I'll let you know if anything comes up from the identification." He couldn't perform an autopsy without approval from any living kin that the victim might have had.

Ky nodded, then rubbed his eyes tiredly as he started for the hovercraft - though not without a motion to the female officer who was his second-in-command with a few last-moment instructions. "Felice, if you would be so kind, please handle the forensics team. I have to go make a few phone calls..."

"Of course, Captain." She didn't ask what, not that she needed to. Ky was simply following GPF protocol: filling out his report and phoning it in to the chief. The report would not only go on the next day's business of importance, but probably out to the various hunter circuits as well.

As much as he hated to admit it, Ky Kiske had a feeling the police might need the hunters' aid before it was all said and done...

************************

--THE DEVIL'S LIVING PLACE: UNDISCLOSED--

_You really shouldn't be here. Humans are probably the last thing he wants to see right now._

That, however, was of little concern to the young Asian man who now paused on the edge of the clearing, trying to be as silent as possible and adjusting his glasses as he gazed upon the figure kneeling at the small trickle that passed for a stream. The delicate-looking man whom he was watching was clad in black leather - an odd combination of a body wrap and a halter that left his lower back and midsection exposed, though half of it was shielded by a thick lustrous mane of silken obsidian hair that probably hadn't seen a brush in quite a while. 

_Guess he decided to stay here even after she left. I wonder why..._

Before Anji could do anything else, however, the figure stiffened, back going ramrod straight as the chin slowly lifted and the knees tensed, shifting and supporting the extra weight placed upon them. Swiftly and silently the young man raised from his half-squatting kneel to a standing position, the action drawing him to his full height with an eerily liquid grace that was far from human.

Apparently Anji Mito's presence hadn't gone unnoticed.

"Don't move." The voice was a smooth silken tenor-baritone, a rasped whisper of sound so soft it could almost be gentle if not for the implicit threat written beneath its currents. 

Then again, this particular individual didn't need to be loud or strident, as his mere presence spoke for him. 

Mito felt a slight chill at the brusque command; it bespoke an obvious warning to any random intruders - especially when contemplating the tension in his pallid face... He knew from doing research of his own that the former Holy Knight was harmless. But encountering him was a different matter entirely. "Er..." Anji coughed. He was very cautious to keep his hands well in view of the immortal's peripheral vision. Testament was unlikely to attack him without provocation, but all the same it was best not to irritate him as he _was_ a trifle unpredictable.

This was perhaps the third time the wandering activist had spoken to the Gear Lord on less than hostile terms. And although he seemed to tolerate the young Japanese politician well enough... it was a little difficult to know just what exactly was running through his mind at any point. Testament was possessed of an extremely complex personality, Anji knew - he could easily infuse his manner with a cold and venomous arrogance capable of stinging even the most overinflated ego, yet few men could be as humbly self-effacing as he was when it came to matters of personal accomplishment. "I'm sorry to bother you, but..."

"Ah... the indefatigable Anji Mito. Come to pester me about the creator of the Gears once more, or so I assume?" The Gear merely paused before twisting himself halfway to face the interloper. Tired feline eyes flickered with claret-colored recognition as his gaze fell upon Anji's face, then a faint, wry smile. Jaded and cynical by habit, the wielder of Searing Fang wasn't without a certain dry, urbane sense of humor. Macabre as it could sometimes be. "You do realize, I hope, that making the same inquiry of me thrice in the space of a month isn't likely to garner you a different answer."

"It was worth another try." The wanderer smiled a bit in return, dropping his hands. "Should I wipe my feet before I come in, or are you washing your welcome mat in that stream?"

To Anji's surprise the tongue-in-cheek response earned a rare though honest chuckle - an equivalent to rip-roaring laughter, for him. "I daresay I wasn't expecting company of the amiable sort today. Come closer if you like, I don't bite."

"How's business been around here?" Anji took a seat on a small boulder that sat comfortably near the burnt remains of a small campfire. He had to admit a certain amount of gratefulness for the Gear's unusually friendly demeanor. Maybe he was lonely or something. "Looks a little slow of late."

"Oh, humans still come on occasion. Searching for Dizzy, of course, hoping for quick and easy wealth. Mind you, most of them seem to have a rather... detrimental change in fortune when they choose to pursue the issue."

"Isn't that a shame?" Anji said with vast insincerity, and this earned a chuckle of agreement. "I thought Dizzy didn't approve of you killing people."

"Sometimes it's unavoidable. You humans can be persistent to the point of abject stupidity." 

The Japanese man grinned wryly, not missing the pointed remark. "My most sincere apologies."

Testament dismissed the flippantly offered concession with a nonchalant shrug. "Was there something else you desired, or did you simply wish to enjoy my scintillating company?"

"Not much apart from the obvious. I hear there's a bit of a stir in Paris right now, though."

"Oh?" The Gear didn't sound that surprised.

"Someone's been taking up your occupation. Two Gear hunters've turned up dead in the last week, or so I hear through the grapevine."

Another shrug, this one slightly effeminate. "That's two less parasites for me to concern myself with, quite frankly, and the culprit is performing a deed I consider favorable to my own agenda." The brandywine eyes were stern and direct as they focused on Anji's face. "I see no reason to involve myself. I should think you would have realized that by now."

"You knew, didn't you?"

"My dear fellow," Testament said with deliberate aplomb, "you humans have this atrocious habit of forgetting that I have my own ways of keeping abreast of... current events, shall we say? Yes. I knew. The man handling the situation is the boy who harbors such an enormous _affinity_ for our dearly beloved Sol Badguy - Ky Kiske."

Anji whistled. "I do believe I sense sarcasm."

"Perceptive, aren't you? And am I incorrect?"

"No, you're right. He's the one on the case."

"Those who would murder without remorse or care for the error of their ways, regardless of how much the victims might deserve it, are little more than rabid creatures. I can see that as truth despite my own opinion on the matter." A sage nod followed the quiet murmur of approval, though as Testament turned away slightly he didn't quite conceal the grim flicker of concern that escaped his usual shuttered mask of indifference - Anji noted it almost immediately. The Gear's apparent heartlessness was only superficial; though he normally seemed to be against punishment as a rule, he also seemed to make exceptions in certain cases. Which indicated that the business in Paris was more of a concern to the Gear than he was willing to disclose. He still wouldn't involve himself, but neither would he make any effort to aid the criminal. "May Kiske be successful in the hunt."

"He might not be, but it looks like I am."

The rumbling bass of an all-too-familiar voice caused both human and Gear to turn in surprise. Sure enough it was the one, the only badass bounty hunter Sol Badguy. The man was lounging against a sycamore tree at the edge of the grove's clearing (not far from where Anji had been), taking a healthy drag off a cigarette - or unhealthy, depending on your philosophy towards smoking - and grinning with an almost savage cheer at the two men. "Guess the info I got in Madrid on you was right after all, Mito."

Testament scowled, mentally berating himself for allowing Sol to slip past his guard. "What do _you_ want?"

"How rude." Sol shrugged. "What's wrong? I interrupt a tea party or did Mito ask you to dance? You might want to change skirts if you do - that one looks like it's seen better decades."

"Get the hell out of here."

The only reaction to his hostility was a mocking laugh. "Or what? You'll hit me with your matching purse?"

A low threatening snarl, much like that of a panther's, rumbled in Testament's throat. Anji could hear it from where he stood. The Japanese man watched those slim delicate hands clenching into fists so tight that a thin trickle of blood pattered between two of the Gear's knuckles. He wasn't as solid or as strong as Sol, but Anji suspected that if push came to shove he was probably close to being the bounty hunter's match in a fight. "I believe I told you to get out. I won't ask again."

"Gentlemen, please!" Anji Mito held up his hands, trying desperately to play diplomat before both men decided to do some creative reconstructing of the grove. "Can't we handle this later? There are too many breakable things about for the two of you to pick a fight. Trees, rocks, the continent of Europe... that kind of thing."

"I came for you, Mito." Sol crossed his arms and stared at him. "One of the higher-ups in the World Court wants you bad enough to sell their own grandmother. There was a 150,000 world-dollar tune on your happy ass, and _I'm_ taking you with me to Geneva to collect my fees."

"Aaa..." Anji sweatdropped nervously as the American advanced on him, then glanced helplessly at the enraged Testament. _Shit! That must be Lord Smythe-Wilson's doing..._

"He's still pissed at you over what happened to his oldest kid. Not that I give a damn, but you know... business is business." Baiken wasn't going to be happy with him once this got back to her, but she could damn well find another kid to amuse herself with in the meantime. "From there you get to stand trial for aggravated assault."

_All that money on my head, just for an assault charge?_ Anji scratched his head and said the first thing that came to mind in his defense. Unfortunately it made him sound as though he were about six years old. "Hey, he started it."

"He's rich, boy, and rich assholes have a way of beating a dead horse. But that ain't my problem. Now hand over your fans and let's get going. I wanna get to St. Germain sometime this fuckin' century."

"Oh, I think not." Testament narrowed his claret eyes, a slight flicker of gold entering the carmine orbs which now glowed with an unholy light. His right hand unclenched itself, and the grooves his nails had dug into his palms were plainly visible as he made a gesture towards the air. That space seemed to shimmer like a confined heat wave, and there was a low metallic hum before the iridescence solidified itself into a scythe with a blood-red blade. Searing Fang, one of the eight in the OUTRAGE set. "Not unless you wish to lose a limb or two in the process, Sol."

Anji inwardly sighed with relief, although he suspected that the Gear wasn't so much jumping to his defense as he was trying to find any reason possible to provoke Sol. Somehow the bounty hunter always seemed to bring out the former Holy Knight's worst faults: stubbornness, overweening pride, and so on. Sol, however, hardly looked intimidated.

"Watch me tremble in mortal fear, asshole."

"This weapon is quite capable of harming you as much as myself, _prototype_," Testament spat, his hand closing about the scythe's polearm, "and you know it."

"Yeah? Well you know, I hate to laugh and run. But as much as I'd love to waste my valuable time playing with you, I've got better things to do." Sol snagged one of Anji's wrists and yanked him forward before the Japanese man was able to protest, slapping a pair of reinforced steel cuffs about them and taking the twin harisen from his sleeves at the same time. Yeah, he was fast, all right, but being alert was part of the package. "Now let's get going."

Fortune must have been strong with Anji Mito. Testament stepped forward in preparation to block Sol's way when a very loud ringing cut through the relative silence of the grove... a portable telephone, one of the few holdovers from the old days due to its sheer convenience, and obviously belonging to the bounty hunter. It was Sol's turn to scowl.

"The hell? I thought I told him not to call me when I left Madrid..." He pulled the cell from his jeans pocket and flipped the receiver open. "This is Badguy. What's up?"

"Hey, Sol." The voice on the other end was tinny and barely audible - of course, they were out in the middle of goddamned nowhere... "I know you asked me not to call since you were trying to work, but something's come up. You heard about the murders in Paris?"

He thought a moment. He'd seemed to hear something about that around the circle - though he hadn't taken much notice; the only important point of the matter was that it seemed to keep Kiske off his ass. Too bad it took giving the boy a nice nasty murder to leave him the hell alone. "Yeah, through the grapevine."

"The Chief of Police's issued a bounty on the culprit's head, to the tune of three hundred grand. Thought you might be interested."

"Any reason it's so large? That's a pretty good chunk of spare change."

"Uh, that's why I called. You might wanna go to Paris and take a look at the file the city coroner's office pieced together. There's something weird about the case, they said, but they didn't say what."

Crap. Looked like Geneva'd have to wait. "Yeah, okay, I'll be in Paris as soon as I can. Thanks, Sam." With a heavy, irritated sigh Sol closed the receiver and shoved the phone back in his pocket - this time he put it on silent, though.

"What was that about?" Anji frowned, and even Testament raised an ebon brow in silent query.

"You got lucky, Mito. There's some big whoop-de-doo in Paris over a serial killer, and the crazy fuck's worth twice what you are."

"Ah! Well then, you're forgiven for this inconvenience." The politician lifted his shackled wrists with a winsome smile. "Now if you'll just unfasten these bracelets and give me back my weapons, I'll just be on my way..."

Sol emitted a raucous laugh and grabbed Anji's sleeve, tugging him forward. "You ain't gettin' out of this that easy. I think I'd rather be four hundred and fifty grand richer, as opposed to three hundred. I'm not letting you out of my sight until I take you to Geneva."

"Mou..." Oh, well. It was worth a try...

"Let's get going, then. It's three hours' walk to St. Germain - we'll have to get transport to Paris from there."

The other Gear frowned faintly, tilting his head as if listening to something no one else could hear, then slowly nodded. He opened his hand, and the scythe seemed to fold in on itself as it vanished from sight. "I'll come along."

"Why?"

Justice's former right hand sighed irritably. "Because I _feel_ like it, that's why. Would you like me to give you a dissertation, or would you mind leaving well enough alone?"

"You aren't going like that, are you? They'll call the alarm as soon as you hit town."

"I have ways of hiding myself from human notice."

Sol uttered a noncommittal grunt. He didn't relish traveling with the self-righteous bastard, but as long as he kept his mouth shut and minded his own business, the bounty hunter didn't particularly care what his reasons were for tagging along. If Testament wanted to go to Paris just to tap dance and jerk off at the same time, whatever. "Just don't get in my way, understand? You do and I'll hang your skinny ass out to dry."

"Sol," Testament said icily, "I don't think you can even begin to realize just how indifferent I am to your threats."

"And I could give a shit either way."

"Fine."

"Fine.

Anji Mito released a sigh of his own. If Sol and Testament chose to spend the entire trip arguing like a couple of children, this was going to be a very long trip indeed...

************************

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** Honestly, I didn't mean for this chapter to be in only two parts! o_o; I decided at the last minute to go ahead and tie Sol in - now you see why he didn't want Baiken to know why he was asking around. Rahaha. >_>; Anyway, since it was starting to get long, I figured I'd cut this chapter short and set up the next one a little better. My apologies! *bows profusely* 


	3. Dark Echoes

**::chapter three - dark echoes::**

++++++++++++++++++++++++

_"Stand your ground, this is what we are fighting for...  
For our spirit and laws and ways.  
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.  
For heaven or hell we shall not wait."_

--VNV Nation, "Honour"

++++++++++++++++++++++++

--THE MAYSHIP--

"Dizzy... Diz..? Hey, Dizzy! Wake up!"

She hadn't quite realized that she was staring aimlessly at nothing, her soap-soaked dishrag sliding over the porcelain plate in slow circles. But as Dizzy glanced up she perceived that one of the other girls - June, it was - was frowning at her and tapping her toe against the linoleum tile of the galley-kitchen floor. "You fall asleep over there or what?"

The Gear girl gasped and jerked herself back to her task of scrubbing the dishes, a guilty blush staining her pretty cheeks a light fuchsia as her wings shifted a bit with her discomfiture. She could hear the soft fluttery whisper of individual feathers brushing against each other. "I... I'm sorry...I guess I was daydreaming."

"Hey, it's no big deal. Geez, you apologize for everything." June shook her head with a faint laugh. "I just wanted you to hand me an extra towel if there are any - mine kinda got dropped on accident and it's almost time for someone else to come in here and help," the pirate girl added, gesturing to the floor upon which the soiled cloth lay. Her grin was decidedly embarrassed. "I'm a little clumsy sometimes."

"Oh. All right, here," Dizzy said as she hastily handed June a fresh towel - she was still feeling more than a little flustered, but the blush was fading. It was so strange here... being constantly surrounded by such peaceful-natured humans, and so many of them. She hadn't been around this many humans since - well, ever, really. Maybe when she was first born, but she couldn't remember that far back. Even though by all rights they should have hated her - many of these girls had lost families to creatures like her - they were all so _nice_ to her. None of them seemed to care that she was a Gear, even though they knew about it by now. She could almost pretend for a while that she was no different from the rest of them.

It was almost as if they found it impossible to believe that she was capable of hurting anything. Dizzy knew better, but she was surprised to find herself fairly content. Before joining the Jellyfish Pirates she had acknowledged the concept of "friend", but not the idea of "confidante", someone who really understood her concerns through shared experience. And while her scythe-wielding guardian was certainly a very sweet man, he wasn't a teenage girl. Granted that Dizzy wasn't either, chronologically speaking... but she was certainly of age in other areas.

Dizzy just wasn't afraid anymore, the way she had always been in her grove. Even when she'd no longer been alone she had worried about her companion and the way he was constantly using himself to draw attention away from her when humans came too close to her home. She just couldn't stand the idea that he might be badly injured, even killed - all to protect her. She wasn't worth that risk, not when she couldn't even control her own power enough to guarantee _she_ wouldn't be the one to hurt him, or anyone else...

_"Go away!" she shrieked, sobbing, pushing the sorrowful-eyed intruder away with a violent shove. The girl stumbled backwards towards the entrance of her cave, copper-colored eyes blinded by tears of despair and confusion as she nearly tripped over the hem of her long, puritanical gray frock. "Please... just... just go away... if you stay you'll just get hurt and I don't want anyone else to be hurt because of me... just please leave me alone..."_

How long ago had that been? Not so long, really. He'd stumbled upon her by accident, cutting down the hunters who'd cornered her in the clearing without a single hint of mercy or concern for the blood that stained his hands. She had been afraid of him at first, hiding in her cave when he tried to approach her. He'd responded by simply taking a seat by the little area she used as a campfire, leaning his weapon against his shoulders, and waiting for her to come out. Dizzy had at first assumed that hunger or boredom would drive him away, but he had remained, sleepless, waiting. After three days of indecision, then irritation, then listening to Necro and Undine bicker incessantly over whether they should let him be or scare him away, she had emerged... still fearful, but curious.

Only after weeks had passed did he tell her his name, after she had healed him with the simple balm of empathy and kindness. Dizzy suspected that no one had ever shown him either of the two. And as she spoke to him at length she saw past the intimidating facade, saw him for what he was: a broken man who hadn't quite lost the capacity to give compassion and comfort freely despite his own pain - a pain of which he never spoke, and probably never would. It was not her benefactor's wish to pity himself. He had in fact told her once that he thought it "disrespectful to those who have truly suffered." It was that realization, the acknowledgement that there was infinitely more to him than met the eye, which made her fear of him vanish...

"Evie, get in here! It's your turn to dry dishes!"

"A-all right..."

The Gear paused in scrubbing and glanced towards June to see the reed-slender, petite brunette who was possibly even more reticent than she was. Evelyn, or Evie as everyone called her, had been mute for a very long time after joining Johnny's band - so May had said. And even now that she could speak, she didn't do it very much. You couldn't help but feel a certain maternal instinct when dealing with her - she was so timid and meek that her very manner compelled protection from those around her. Johnny never sent her out on heists because she just didn't have the temperament for that sort of work. Evelyn never seemed to mind her relegation to more menial tasks, however. Dizzy liked her almost as much as May, though for very different reasons; the personalities of each girl were quite nearly polar opposites.

"Hi, Dizzy," Evelyn mumbled, her face turning an interesting shade of red as she spoke. Her chestnut-brown eyes wouldn't meet the other girl's. She always seemed a little afraid of Dizzy, but she was a little afraid of everyone else too - so it wasn't anything personal. "Have you been here long?"

"Yes. But I promised May that I would take her place tonight."

"She wanted to go to the bridge with Johnny, right?"

Smiling, the Gear girl nodded.

"She...she always does stuff like that. We all love Johnny, but she's scary about it." Evie let out a tiny yelp as she realized just what she'd said, and that of all of them May was probably the closest to the new girl. "I mean.. I'm sorry. I know May's your friend. Just forget I said anything..."

"It's all right," Dizzy replied, shaking her head. "That's just the way May is."

Evie threw her a hesitant smile in return, relaxing a bit as Dizzy's openness seemed to encourage her a little. "She actually joined the big tournament last year to free Johnny from jail when he got arrested. He nearly had a fit when he found out."

Dizzy laughed a little, her crimson eyes searching Evie's face. "Captain Johnny says that maybe between him and me we can keep May out of too much trouble."

Her observation was met with a little giggle. "That's easier said than done with May, you know. She can get into more trouble on accident than most people can on purpose."

"I know the feeling." And she did, it was completely true. 

_I can only hope trouble doesn't follow me here, too..._

And before long, the young Gear would have cause to recall that thought in bitter circumstances.

*****************************

--HUNTER'S WIRE, RUE VERDANT, PARIS--

"Both of you'd better behave yourselves," Sol muttered under his breath, just enough for Anji to hear him. The politician could sense the third member of the party somewhere close by, but save the sight of a large black raven perched on the streetlamp above his head, there was no sign of the Gear Lord.

"Where's Testament?" Anji shifted uncomfortably. The steel hasps about his wrists were itching and sore upon his flesh, and his feet ached from the three-hour walk to St. Germain - there'd been no help for it since none of the tiny villages in closer proximity had provided direct transportation to Paris, and Sol had been in one hell of a hurry to get to the capital city.

"Right over there to your left. As much as I wish he'd get lost." The snapped reply wasn't without a bit of hopefulness, and sure enough it didn't go unanswered.

_"I heard that, Sol."_

Anji jumped with startlement at the cold echo of the other Gear's voice, looked around, saw no one, and realized with something like uneasiness that the testy response had been totally mental. Sol, on the other hand, glanced at a seemingly empty space to Anji's left and nodded coolly, obviously seeing something the human couldn't. The Japanese man glanced nervously up at the crow familiar, who stared at him with golden-hued indifference and cawed softly. 

Then they were entering the relative warmth of the contact office. This was where all the notifications went out to the bounty agents and by proxy to their clients. A heavily built man who'd probably been a hunter in younger days waved as he stood and approached, his right foot dragging behind him a bit and giving him a slight limp. His dark hair was brushed at the temples with silver, and his blue eyes were webbed at the corners with all the sun-hardened wrinkles. But they were friendly eyes, unlike Sol's shuttered chocolate-brown orbs.

"Hey, Badguy! Long time no see." The voice was unmistakably American. "Sam told me to expect you. Who's your friend?"

"Just a tagalong. I'm taking him to Geneva, thought we'd make a stopover on the way," came the curt reply. No need to give out the full story just now; there was business to be handled. Sol wasn't one for idle chitchat anyway.

The contact seemed to get the hint right away; he nodded quickly and dropped all pretense. "Coroner's officer left us the files on all the victims. Autopsy reports, everything. They had a hassle with the second guy who was killed trying to get his family to release the body for all the examinations - bunch of religious freaks apparently, said the autopsy was defiling him somehow. Can't see how, since I don't think he cares one way or the other anymore." He gestured towards the back room. "Follow me."

Testament seemed to melt out of the shadows as he followed the men on silent feet - in truth, he'd been present the entire time; he'd just chosen not to reveal himself. It was one of the myriad spells at his disposal. He couldn't cloak himself in broad daylight, but he _could_ insert a hypnotic suggestion to the minds of humans in the vicinity that he was psychologically invisible: those who fell under its thrall would simply not notice him even though he was in plain sight. Simple but quite effective. Even Mito was susceptible to it to a certain degree, despite knowing he was in the area...

No, he wasn't as powerful as Dizzy or as well-endowed with brute strength as Sol, but his facility to harness and channel black magic more than made up for both deficiencies.

_I'm missing something. For a moment in the grove I thought I felt something: a twinge of power, something familiar... my imagination, perhaps...?_

It was nagging at him now that he had chosen to dwell on it, which annoyed him. Testament didn't like to concern himself with human affairs, and he was busy telling himself to leave it alone. But if he really believed it was just that, why had he acted on the impulse to accompany Badguy and Mito to Paris?

He'd learned to trust his misgivings over the years, and that sense of something overwhelmingly familiar had only increased as they had neared the capital city...

"Here you go," the contact was saying, passing Sol a manila file folder. A flash of color within bespoke pictures. "They don't have any pictures of the suspect in GPF files, so the composite artists up at Central Paris HQ got together and drew out the eyewitness description. Pretty accurate, they said. The only thing that differed was hair style, clothing, that sort of thing."

Sol grunted. "You want this back?"

"It's okay, this isn't the original copy, and a bunch of those drawings were made. Keep whatever you need."

Anji sighed. "Sol?"

"What now?"

"Could you at least take these handcuffs off me?"

"Can pigs fly?"

In other words, no. "Come now, where do you think I'm going to go? I'll just get picked up by another hunter." The Harisen had their own special abilities - but Sol had his hands on those right now, so escape was pretty much out of the question. Besides, if he were freed, he could always just steal the fans and make himself scarce at a more convenient date. "Besides, you have my weapons."

"Jesus H. All right, if you'll shut up..." He set the folder aside long to produce the key to Anji's restraints, unshackled his bounty, then tucked the cuffs away with a narrow, distrustful expression. "You try to run from me, Mito, and I promise you'll spend the rest of your life untying your hakama with your teeth."

Anji held up his hands. "I wouldn't dream of it."

All that got was another grunt as Sol turned back to the folder and began to sift through the photos and report copies inside. His dual-toned eyes skimmed the latest report with no betrayal of anything he might have felt, ignoring Anji's curiosity-fueled attempts to read over his shoulder. The third to fall prey to this unknown killer's pattern was one Marcus Andrew Berkman, thirty-four year old native of New York (what was left of it), freelance mercenary and bounty hunter. Known by some as 'Wind Rider' because of his innate ability to channel wind magic - albeit in a highly limited sense. _'Wind Rider'? What the hell kind of stupid ass name is that? Sounds like someone was half-baked when they came up with that crap..._ Not much more than a slight whiff of natural talent that had probably greased the skids for him in a lot of places, Sol thought. 

He'd joined the Seikishidan in 2169 on a whim, left shortly after Ky Kiske was appointed the commander of the force and had been supporting himself with a variety of jobs - mostly over minor bounty runs on petty criminals and small-time Mafia-affiliated racketeers. Third-rate hunter at the most, but he'd been bragging to a lot of associates on the circuit that he was after the 'big prize' as he'd called it. The five hundred thousand dollar Gear. And somehow, he'd ended up dead on a Seine River wharf not far from the airship docks, a block away from a tavern which was a known hangout for prostitutes.

"Huh, the suspect's a woman," Anji observed as he frowned at the picture. "Pretty enough, but... there's something a little off about her."

Testament glanced over at the two men, his eyes flickering with disinterest over the woman's picture - and immediately did a double take. "Wait a minute! Let me see that." His gaze narrowing and sharpening as it settled upon the composite drawn, he reached forward and took it from under Sol's nose, bringing it closer.

"Hey," Sol began, but the expression on the younger Gear's face silenced him. He was staring at the painstakingly detailed sketch with an unnerving intensity, as though he were an art historian perusing a newly discovered Monet painting. "What's that all about?"

After a moment Testament shook his head and handed it back, wordlessly turning away. A sidewise glance to the window gave him a view of his familiar Yoshino, the demon crow, gazing unconcernedly at her master from her perch on the sill. Something seemed to pass between the two, an unspoken command, and with a caw and a flutter of coal-black wings the bird disappeared. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to Sol and Anji, who were still perusing the file. His eyes kept traveling back to the woman's face. She'd let her hair grow out, but... it was still her. Testament had assumed she'd been hunted down. So many of their kind had been eliminated after Justice's sealing eight years ago...

Sol cast a strange look at the younger man as he flipped through pages. "If you wanted the picture that damn badly you could've just asked me for it."

"Sorry," was all he could muster. Anji was the only one to catch the troubled expression that fluttered across the mage's porcelain-skinned face, but it was so quick and so faint he almost thought he'd imagined it.

"Better take this with me," the bounty hunter said after a moment, scooping up all the photos and assorted papers with one hand and tucking them untidily back into the manila folder. "Some of this is heavy reading, and I'd be here all day if I tried. Let's go get a place for the night..."

- - - - - - - - - - 

The inn Sol had chosen was a modest one. Not much beyond the basics, to the private dismay of Anji Mito who admittedly appreciated the finer things in life. He wasn't asking for a four-star hotel, but really, a tiny room with two double beds? That meant he'd either have to share with one of the other two or sleep on the floor...

He glanced hopefully at Sol then shot down the urge to converse almost as soon as it came to him. The bounty hunter was too busy reading through that file to have the time or patience for anything approaching conversation. Besides, Anji got the impression that Sol didn't care much for him anyway, bounty mark or no.

_I don't think Sol cares about much of anyone or anything, least of all himself._

It was an interesting idea, and a little sad as well. Anji shook his head and glanced over at the bed. Maybe the other Gear would be willing to talk to him, and besides, the politician wanted to know what had been nagging at him all day to put him in the brooding, silent mood he'd been in when they arrived at the inn.

But there was no one. Their third wheel was gone. "Testament?"

No reply. Anji coughed, looking nervous. "You can stop doing that now, it's just the three of us." Besides, it was a trifle disconcerting to talk to what looked like empty air. Not to mention, an irritating habit...

"He's not here, Mito," Sol growled. "He left like Satan was riding his ass about half an hour ago, while you were downstairs whining to room service about dinner. That crow of his scared the shit outta me tapping on the window." He glanced up briefly, fixing Anji with his crimson eye. "Swear to Christ, I'm gonna kill that goddamn bird and have roasted squab for dinner some night..."

The Japanese man blinked, ignoring the rest of that. "Where'd he run off to?"

"Didn't say. Something about business to handle. Now could you shut up and let me read?"

Anji Mito fell silent, grumbling under his breath about the rudeness of _some_ people, present company not excluded.

****************************

--LOCATION UNDISCLOSED--

...all in all, she was rather satisfied with herself.

She'd taken pains to appear human on those little outings of hers to gain information - at least, long enough to garner the information she required before she disposed of her sources. Wouldn't do to have a perfect description of her getting back to the police, now would it? And in the areas she'd been frequenting of late it wasn't all that much of a surprise to see a racily dressed woman prowling about a bar. Human habits had told her that much.

_I've lain in hiding for the last five years like a stray dog in a pile of garbage, and now it's all about to pay off..._

The woman glanced into the cracked mirror on her way down the hall of her rundown flat. Human enough at a glance, yes. Furthermore, not bad-looking by human standards if she could say so herself. Long violet-black hair and strangely arresting golden eyes. Long legs, slim oval face, full breasts. Yeah, nice body. Just... looked like your average woman, though strikingly attractive. If not for the symbol emblazoned on her forehead - that forced her to wear various headpieces when in public areas - she could blend in perfectly. The ancient old woman whom she'd rented the flat from hadn't been able to tell what she was, certainly. Well, okay, she'd been half-blind anyway. But it'd still worked.

It wasn't really that she needed a place to live, but one must keep up appearances when working incognito, and so she'd conformed enough to escape the notice of the human law enforcement. So much the better. When Master Justice had been declared captured, that had nearly killed her. Devoid of any purpose, she'd only just managed to flee the witch hunt that ensued: the human massacre of Gears worldwide. Now not even a handful were left. And it was all because of that filthy, sanctimonious Holy Knight... and the prototype Gear...

_...stupid... humans...._

But there had been an ace in the hole, hadn't there...? A strangely fond smile drifted over her face, though the golden eyes were bright with a zealot's insanity. He'd almost succeeded, too. It'd just been his bad luck to encounter the same pair who killed their master. After that, he had disappeared, and she had assumed him dead until she'd started hearing the rumors of a strange figure roaming the forests. Most likely he'd assumed that the death of Justice had made their goal a completely lost cause.

Not all of Justice was gone yet, though. Oh no indeed.

A discreet rap at the door jolted her from her thoughts, but that was trivial compared to the comfortingly familiar waves of dark power that preceded it. A slow manic grin stretched her full mouth and her eyes sparkled happily as she bounded to the door and pulled it open: an unconventionally pretty woman in a tattered old long-sleeved jumper and a pair of cutoff denims - and a five-tongued symbol half-concealed beneath her violet-black hair.

The figure before her was achingly familiar, so wondrously unchanged that it delighted her. A tall young man, slender and pale and graceful, stood at the threshold. His long wild waterfall of ebony hair was being tossed in haphazard directions by the chill wind wafting from the Seine as his exotic feline eyes gazed upon her countenance with a curiously clinical dispassion. There was a large black raven perched on his shoulder. It cawed a bit as she peered at it, the raucous scraping sound softened by lack of volume as it proceeded to preen itself - evidently deciding that she was beneath its notice. Absentmindedly, as if on habit alone, the man lifted a fragile-looking hand to stroke the bird's feathered back.

_Testament. You've come back to me at last._ She didn't bother to speak aloud, knowing he could hear her perfectly. An honest smile replaced the one that had been frighteningly devoid of anything approaching sanity as she just stared at him - her expression now rather flirtatious, almost coy. He was every bit as otherworldly and beautiful as she remembered... and when he spoke, it was as if the five years since she had seen him had never passed at all.

"Hello, Kira."

***************************

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** God, I love VNV Nation. (Right, in case you couldn't tell.) If they were of the heavy metal genre, they'd be a perfect band for GGX. Their lyrics fit Guilty Gear well and consistently. So. Yeah! There you are. Chapter numero tres. *dies* x_x Four and five should be out in the next couple of days, methinks... Get to know Kira. She will scare you eventually. The woman does not just have issues, she has entire volumes of subscriptions. o_o;; RAHAHAHA. HA. *cough* 

You know what's really funny? I shouldn't have the time to do this, it's finals week. But here I am, cranking out a _third_ chapter of this nonsense in a white heat, and I'm about to start on the fourth. This may take me a while, but I've got all Christmas break to do it XD; Okay. Note stuff. On the raven's name there's a bit of a discrepancy. Some people say Yoshino, others say Zio. O_o; Can someone please tell me what's up with that? I've never seen where the name Zio comes from at all. *_* All the reviews from the nice people make me feel all squishy and loved. ^_^ Thanks so much for the feedback! Continue, _por favor_~ ^^ 


	4. Kira

**::chapter four - kira::**

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

_"And we who were so scorned  
Shall always wish to make their end.  
Our hearts to still their voice.  
Our hands to break their worthless necks."_

--VNV Nation, "Procession"

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  
  
--LOCATION UNDISCLOSED--

All he could do was stand at the threshold and stare at her. She looked... so human. 

It was more than a bit strange. Long black hair, tumbling in loose curls about her shoulders and framing her cheekbones, very nearly as long as his... golden eyes - amber thinly webbed with the pale sky-blue they had been once upon a time - drinking in every minute detail of his face. Her attire was casual in the extreme, seemingly more fit for a university student relaxing in a dormitory than it was for a weapon of mass destruction.

But it was the expression that resided in her pretty face for the faintest fraction of a second. There was a girlishness, almost an ingenuity that he'd rarely seen written there - for a moment, Testament had to wonder if perhaps he was mistaken in his assumption that she was the one behind the recent string of murders.

Then she released a cackle of wicked glee and the momentary spell was broken.

"Testament, my lovely one! It's been _such_ a long time. Come in, come in!" Kira laughed, one of her hands snatching his with an eerie swiftness as she tugged insistently. After a moment's hesitation he followed her inside. The hard, bright shine had returned to her eyes, and he knew that he hadn't been at all mistaken. Yoshino had sought out the woman in the drawing as he had asked, and had brought him here. The demon crow obeyed her master without question, and was frighteningly accurate in executing her duties; the chance that she had made a mistake during her surveillance was so slim as to be nearly nonexistent. He mentally asked her if she wished to enter, and all he received was a flat denial. Well, she could care for herself well enough, he supposed...

The small flat was dimly lit and a little run-down, though it looked as though Kira had taken pains to make it appear somewhat respectable. Was that just a female's instinct, he wondered, or was it a holdover from her own life as a human? It was a wonder she was sentient. Aside from her blind loyalty to their master during the Crusades, she had been more brutal than Testament by far. And his insanity had been severe enough in its own right. 

_The madness of an immortal with even the smallest amount of free will is infinitely worse than the madness of a human, for an immortal has plenty of time and enough power to see that his or her diseased imaginings will come to pass._

His musings were interrupted as she pushed him down into a chair so old that the springs had ceased to support any rear ends that occupied it, and he felt a moment's alarm as he seemed to sink into the fabric. "Sit down, stay a while. I'll pour us some drinks and you can tell me what you've been doing for the last year. I thought those humans killed you and our master both, then I start hearing rumors that you're abroad again..."

Testament recovered from his bemusement at her oddly domesticated behavior long enough to shake his head and brace his palms against the chair - struggling to reclaim his balance and retain his dignity at the same time as he rose to his feet. "Kira, I didn't come here to reminisce or to fulfill a social obligation of some kind..."

"I didn't think so." She stepped back into the room, a pair of glasses in her hand and a small decanter of sherry in the other. Despite her relaxed manner, Kira couldn't help but feel a bit triumphant as a faint smugness found its way into her voice. He had come to her just as she had hoped he would. Now she would reveal her plan, and he would reveal his, and it would be just like old times. They could work together as they had during the war. She'd leave the sensitive details to him, of course. Testament had ever been more patient than she, with a much better understanding of human behavior. It was a very handy tool for manipulation - it'd worked once before, hadn't it? "You never were one for small talk."

_He can bring back our master. I know he can. He's probably been planning away, trying to figure out how to try again. But this time, he won't be alone. I'll join him. If the two of us combine our power, the humans won't stand a chance... together, we'll rid the earth of these wasteful worthless scum who dare to think themselves better than we are..._

What would be even more interesting was how he would react to what she had in mind.

"No," he agreed quietly, "I'm not. Not when I have more important business at hand."

"Drink up," she grinned, gesturing. "Surely you can stay long enough for a little drink?"

He shook his head and raised the drink to his lips, sipping politely. Sherry wasn't one of his preferences, though he remembered that it had been hers. The odd thing about their class of Gears was that in many cases they retained some of their human qualities. "I suppose, as long as you understand that I have business with you."

"So impersonal. I'm _hurt_, Testament." She laughed merrily, but the sound had a certain degree of hollowness to it. His claret eyes never left his female counterpart's face as she paused in her obviously contrived gaiety long enough to take a healthy swallow from her glass. "So what's this 'business' you're wanting to discuss...?"

"Three men are dead, Kira." The Gear set his glass down on a nearby side table and eyed her with a piercing crimson gaze. "In the last week, mind. The police have issued a composite sketch drawn from eyewitnesses, and it looks quite a bit like you. You wouldn't have had something to do with it, by any chance... would you, my dear?"

"You think such things of me?"

"I _know_ you, Kira. Be a good girl and stop evading the question. Did you kill them?"

She shrugged, as if the accusation of murder was of no great consequence. To her, it probably wasn't. "So what if I did? They were just humans. Who'd miss them?"

"Apparently enough people missed them that the Global Police Force received clearance to issue a three hundred thousand-dollar bounty on your neck. Every human within a hundred miles would be swarming this hovel if they knew you were here." As was his wont, one of Testament's slim black eyebrows arched loftily upwards. "That was careless of you, darling... forgetting about those loose ends. Very, very careless."

"I shan't do it again, I promise." Another laugh, then an innocent query: "You aren't mad at me, are you, Testament?"

"That depends." He continued to eye her with that granite-sturdy calm. "I also know you well enough to know that you usually don't establish a pattern of killing specific humans without a good reason for it."

Kira fluttered her lashes a bit, her expression oddly guileless. "I only meant to finish what you started."

"What I started...? Did I start something?"

"Justice."

Testament shut his eyes. He should have figured it was something like that. Kira had adored their master blindly, but... where would she have gained the sentience to do any of this... much less the wherewithal to make any sort of attempt at clandestine organization at all?

_Justice can't be alive. I would know it, if he were..._

The woman blinked, absentmindedly tucking a sheaf of dark violet hair behind one elfin ear. He wasn't taking this as enthusiastically as she had hoped. Maybe he had a plan of his own and didn't want her involved?

Oh, but that wasn't _logical..._

But, she reminded herself, Testament had always had just that tiniest touch of human still in him. Justice had hated it because it made him difficult to control as completely as he did the others. But it had been tentatively overlooked. The rebel Gear - however many misgivings the former Knight's unique state of semi-sentience gave him - had not pressed the issue since the young man had remained fanatically loyal and that was more important. Human beings were not, strictly speaking, very logical creatures. So maybe in retrospect, it _did_ make sense if he harbored an obscure sense of resentment towards her. Maybe she'd thought of something first and he was simply jealous.

So she assumed, meanwhile failing to see the irony in the fact that not only was she once human herself, her own actions were inherently illogical.

"You can help me," she offered with a bright smile. "That's why I wanted you to come. That's why I wanted to talk to you. I can't do this alone. You're better at handling those creatures than I am. You can pass yourself off as one, and I can only do so much. I know I have limits. You tried to do everything yourself last time and you ran into bad luck. But if we work together this time, we can do it. I know we can do it..."

"Kira," he interrupted as gently as possible, "the First is dead. He was killed by Ky Kiske and Sol Badguy last year, when I managed to free him..."

"He's not dead!"

"Yes, he is." That was true... wasn't it? "I saw his body myself, Kira. Lord Justice is a year in his grave."

"His body is gone, but his spirit remains." Testament saw the unholy shimmer lurking in her amber eyes. "The humans have displeased their own God with their arrogance even as they've displeased Justice, and now he speaks to me through our master. It's our duty to kill them all. We have to begin anew, and to do that we have to discard all the corruption. It's the only way to save everything."

"By destroying it in the process?"

"If I didn't know better, I would think you were trying to _discourage_ me." That glittering smile suddenly receded into a sullen pout. "I'd think that you of all people would understand what I'm trying to accomplish."

"Yes," he admitted. He was no saint himself, and heaven forbid he ever pretend to be one. But even his thought patterns had modified themselves, now that his master was dead. How could he be so transformed by the loss of Justice... and Kira so unchanged?

_She's dangerous, more dangerous than she ever was. She has just enough sanity and free will to survive, but not enough to differentiate between reality and this delusion of hers._

He couldn't help but feel a twinge of pity for her. Maybe it was because of that remembered fellowship, or lingering loyalties... or maybe a part of him agreed with her. Testament supposed that all three possibilities were valid enough.

Although he found the latter one very disquieting...

"Then you'll help me get rid of the humans..." Kira stood, setting her glass on that same table, then approached him until the crown of her head was nearly brushing his nose - she was a tall woman. The smile had changed, becoming that slow sly stretching of her lips, and Testament felt the slight friction and brush of cotton as her arms wrapped leisurely about his neck and drew them closer. This time her eyes and his met and once more, the years dropped away... as if they, like Kira's earlier assertion, were no more than a finely orchestrated delusion. "For our master? Or... for old times' sake? Just you and me... no one else...?"

...when had he lost the ability to move...?

"Kira..."

The Second Lord Gear had meant to protest, to refuse her, but she made her move before he could muster his words.

Kira kissed him, and his senses reeled in absolute shock.

The contact of her lips against his, soft and moist and tasting of that sherry, was something he was ill-prepared to absorb - and therefore he failed to raise his defenses as he would have done otherwise. Almost reluctantly he raised his hands from their stiffly locked positions at his sides, but instead of grasping her shoulders to push her away they hovered at her waist. There was a hungry noise, almost a savage half-growled whimper issuing from the back of her throat as she made her decision to deepen the kiss, her tongue slipping with deft skill between his lips and nudging insistently at the wall of his teeth...

For a few moments a part of him responded as that dormant beast within his own mind rattled its chains.

Old memories, old _instincts_ that he hadn't experienced since the simultaneous horror and exhilaration of those first days of his altered existence... alive now, at his beck and call. With a mere thought Testament knew he could summon them and make them reality once more: the sharp metallic taste of blood and the shrieks of the dying, chaos, destruction, armageddon, the forever-young but inevitably rotting corpse of a child trapped beneath a half-collapsed building. The end of days. All of it was a macabre blur of free-association imagery, a lurid vision of stark and horrible reality through the brimstone eyes of a madman. And beneath it all the seductive silken whisper of that beast, all too willing to assume dominance...

... he knew it was no more than Kira's fervent desire for utter annihilation, simply a broadcast from her broken mind to the echo chambers of his divided psyche.

More intuited than conscious, it nevertheless caused the darkness of his own tainted soul to come screaming to life, demanding his attention, and oh God he was so tempted, so fearfully tempted...

And it was that part of Justice still extant within himself which pillaged her mercilessly, took what she offered without giving anything in return. This was an urge that had not disappeared with the transformation from human to something not-so-human, and his seldom-invoked libido was busily and happily reminding him _just how long_ it had been since he had done anything to satisfy it. Inopportune, to say the least, since it inevitably caused this conflict of ethics and primal drive... it shouldn't have, by all rights. He personified the grim visage of Death. Death had no natural opposing element to counteract its frozen grip, no fire to its ice. But he was only a man after all, and still human, and the errant flint-sparks that were her madness set his cold blood aflame.

But...

What of Dizzy?

For that matter, what of the new start that he'd promised Kliff he would try to make... what of the new start he had promised to _himself_? If he gave in to his old self he was damned forever. Tesu Undersn would truly die, Justice would triumph and so would Kira. It was one thing to risk your life, but she was upping the ante to his very soul - and that price was one he was no longer willing to pay.

Testament wrenched his mouth away just long enough to gasp for breath, his eyes slightly wild as they fluttered open and his gaze fell upon her face. Twin windows to hell were unshuttered for all of a moment, before the fire died and the curtains were drawn. Her grin was wider and more beatific than ever as she saw it, her own chest heaving... and this time, there was unmistakable lust in her eyes, along with a strange sort of greed.

He lifted his hands and this time they found her shoulders.

"Ah, so you _do_ remember that, after all. I knew you'd see it my way eventually..." She leaned forward to nibble at him and caught his lower lip with the points of her fangs, drawing his blood. The sting was another jolt back to reality. Seduction? Maybe. Or possibly something much more prosaic. No one ever said that Kira didn't have a sense of pragmatic cunning when she wanted to exercise it. She could be brutal... but she could also be very, very subtle when the mood took her. Fortunately it was a rare occasion when she was sane or patient enough for the latter...

_...she's trying to manipulate me with my own memory. It's just another of her mind tricks to get what she wants..._

Same old Kira - she was a walking honey trap, uttering words that were like blowdarts with poisoned edges, disguised as harmless toys. She knew well of the dual perceptions that constantly plagued him with their incessant collision, and she was summoning forth the memories of himself as the disciple of Justice... all to further confuse him. He surmised that in confusing him Kira hoped to make him pliant enough to bend to her will (what existed of it) despite his own wishes. 

But Testament was himself a gentle killer, capable of subtleties that Kira was not. He knew his own tactics when he saw them quite well. All too well. 

He'd taught her to behave this way, after all.

The Gear shook his head and pushed her away while vigorously wiping the back of his forearm across his now-bloodstained mouth. It was a bit of a stop-gap, but it succeeded in breaking the odd enthrallment she'd cast upon him. Kira got the hint immediately, and the lust and greed and wild triumph were replaced with angry bafflement. In all the years he had known her, he had never refused her anything before, and she didn't understand how he was able to do it now.

"No," was all he said. It was all that had to be said.

"Why?"

"My priorities have changed considerably in the last year, Kira. I'm not the same man you knew during the Crusades."

It was as plain as he could make it without being cruel, but the neutrality in his voice spoke volumes by itself.

The change was obvious. Her face grew very still, almost hurt - insofar as a mad Gear could feel such things, and with it was more than a slight twinge of bitter resentment. Kira's eyes narrowed. "It's that little blue-haired bitch, isn't it? I've heard of her. The winged girl they call the 'Innocent Gear,' the little coward that fears her own power. You'd choose that foolish, naive weakling over me? I'm disappointed, Testament, I thought better of you..."

Testament's eyes flashed ominously as the customary apathy disappeared and he glared at her, the dim guttering light playing disturbing tricks with the contours of his pallid face. "Do not _ever_ speak of Dizzy in that fashion again, Kira, unless you would like to shuffle off this mortal coil sooner than you had expected. My reasons for refusing you are none of your concern, save that I will not aid you in this absurd plan of yours to accomplish the impossible..."

Her chin snapped up and her amber eyes darkened with their own fury.

"Justice is dead, Kira. Let him remain so." He sighed, and the weariness returned to his eyes. "You'll end up regretting it if you pursue the issue. Take it as advice from a comrade-in-arms, if not as an old friend."

The cold, shuttered expression written on her pretty face didn't change as she spoke. "I take it that you won't help me, then."

"I will not." He took a few steps towards the door, one hand closing about the door handle and the other slightly outstretched, ready to summon his fang should she try to prevent his exit. "I believe we've exhausted all the possibilities of this discussion, so I think perhaps I should be on my way."

"Testament?"

"Yes?"

"Advice in return, for that kiss." Her smile was as glacial as her voice. "You might want to keep an eye on that politician friend of yours. Humans can be _so_ rash. And he's more reckless than most... isn't he...?"

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. He had never mentioned that he even knew Anji Mito, much less that he was traveling with him. "This is between you and me."

Kira didn't reply, just leveled him with that hostile stare and watched him walk out the door. Had Testament glanced backwards, he would have seen the sudden sadistic glow in her smirk. Kira was a bully who took advantage of perceived weakness - and she always had a contingency plan when something went awry.

None of this occurred to the Gear. He stamped irritably down the stairwell, waiting until he stepped out the door to the dimly-lit sidewalk before he leaned against the brick facade of the soot-dusted flat building and ran his fingers through his long black hair. 

_Are you sure you want to simply leave this alone? She's a rabid animal... and she's dangerous, not just to other people but to herself. Do you want to assume responsibility if she kills again...?_

"I'll have to tell Sol where she is..." 

It came out as a faint mutter, almost a rasp. His expression tightened uneasily as he glanced up at the third-story window that was now devoid of light. The thought rankled him slightly, but at least Sol didn't have a moral conflict over killing his own kind. If anyone could put Kira out of her misery without blinking an eye it would be Badguy. And as much as he pitied her, as reluctant as he was to betray her to the bounty hunter... that look in her eyes made him doubt that he had much of a choice in the matter.

_"You might want to keep an eye on that politician friend of yours. Humans can be so rash..."_

It was probably an empty threat. But... just in case...

_I'll watch him carefully. That's all I can do for now._

Testament felt a stirring of air and heard the flutter of bird wings as the familiar weight of the demon crow landed upon his shoulder. Glancing moodily at Yoshino, he made his way back towards the inn in silence, footsteps heavy.

*******************************************

**AUTHOR'S NOTES**: This is possibly the only chapter that I didn't plan to split into multiple parts. There was some stuff that I wanted to do in order to establish the nature of the interaction between these two before I progressed with the other characters... @_@; However! History with Kira notwithstanding, I have no intention of giving Testament a romantic connection to her or anyone else... unless of course you count Dizzy, and frankly I don't ^^; So before you ask me, no, this is not some sadly orchestrated way to display fangirlism. Kira wants Testament, he doesn't want her. Years and years of water under the bridge - and she's a frickin' psycho. End of story. I briefly considered attempting to go ahead and take the scene back to Sol and Anji anyway, but this scene got very long on its own... o_o;

And growl to GG for the cheapness of A.I. instant kills. Arrr. Got through with Sol without any continues until I got to Testament and he instant-killed me seven times in a row. Arrr. x_x; I want the original Baiken, dammit!

*grumblesulkpoutsmashwhine* X_X

Anyway! Next chapter coming soon-like. This is weird, I'm trying to decide if I liked the way this chapter came out... *bleh* >. 


	5. Compassion for Darkness

**::chapter five - compassion for darkness::**

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

_"I only wanted to see  
What would happen to me  
If I followed the road that leads to the palace we all seek.."_

--The Tea Party, "Cathartik" 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

  
--TREMOILLE INN, PARIS--

"...Jesus Christ."

Sol Badguy growled irritably at the pile of police reports, his rugged features drawn into an almost petulant scowl. If not for the smoldering annoyance in his dual-toned eyes, it might have been funny. "Who the hell makes these damned things so long-winded?" 

"You've only been sitting there for an hour and a half," Anji pointed out. The younger man blinked in mild surprise at the pile to Sol's left, the files he'd already finished perusing. Sol was... very efficient at speed-reading. Either that, or he had superhumanly fast data-processing capabilities. But then again that was hardly implausible, not from what Mito had discovered about the bounty hunter during his stint with the World Court. 

Though he could hardly just saunter up to a man who was twice his size and twice his stamina and remark, _How's the weather? By the way, I hear around the grapevine that you're actually the Alpha Gear. That true, or just a silly rumor?_

Anji wondered to himself if Baiken knew. If she did, it was a little surprising that she hadn't torn Sol's head off. But then again, they shared a lot of the same hobbies. He couldn't help but feel the smallest bit jealous. Every time he tried to convince Baiken that the world wasn't as gruesome a place as she seemed to think it was and that she'd be even prettier if she would just smile, she'd just give him this grim, unamused "if you don't shut up I'll remove all hope you might have of ever reproducing" expression. 

But get Sol around her for a little while and she seemed completely different. She laughed at his jokes, no matter how vulgar... and his antipathy towards the world at large didn't even put her off. Moreover, she never seemed to get angry at Sol the way she did at him. 

He couldn't help casting a sullen glare at the bounty hunter. 

Sol, of course, sensed it. It wasn't like it was _that_ difficult to read humans anyway, especially when one was sitting a mere few feet away from you and staring as if he was trying to burn holes through your head with his eyes alone. "...you got a problem?" 

"Nothing. Forget it." Anji flopped backwards, staring at the ceiling without really looking at it at all. He loved his freedom, and the enforced confinement - however brief - was starting to grate on his nerves. Grumbling with the same petulance that had graced the older man's face, he released a long sigh. "And if Testament doesn't hurry up and get back, he's sleeping on the floor." 

"I'd like to see you try and order him around." 

Anji growled. "He'd be better company than you." 

"You wanna come closer and say that?" 

Mito grunted and rolled over to the far side of the bed, dark eyes flickering to the thin sliver of night sky visible between the partially drawn drapes. He had the bad habit of speaking before he thought about his words, and he knew it. Best to just shut his mouth, at least until he found a way to escape later. 

The two men didn't have to wait very long. Anji watched Sol's chin tilt upwards and towards the door out of the corner of his eyes. Sure enough, the doorknob was twisting, hinges creaking softly. 

The door itself opened to reveal a rather solemn, haggard-looking Testament. If anything, the troubled expression in his crimson eyes had increased exponentially and after a moment of staring intently at the Japanese man, he averted his eyes while slowly making his way towards a chair. 

"Your wife here was wondering where you've been," Sol smirked, jerking a thumb at Anji - who merely glared at him. "Where did you run off to, anyway?" 

"I sent Yoshino out to find someone for me. Which she did. A bit too well, at that." 

A noncommittal grunt. 

"And I found your bounty mark for you, if you're interested." 

"Okay, that's nice, now let me get ba-- 'scuse me?" The file was quickly set down as Sol's piercing eyes studied the other Gear suspiciously. "Since when do _you_ take an interest in bounty hunting?" 

"Since the prey in question happens to be someone that should have been killed after the end of the Crusades." 

"Right," the bounty hunter replied, the expression in his eyes turning grim and flat. "You trying to tell me that our serial murderer's a Gear?" 

"One of the human-type Gears, to be precise. They became rather prevalent during the early half of this century. New research and all." He rubbed his brow in a display of weariness. "And would you mind keeping your voice down?" 

"Okay, okay. Hold it." Sol set the rest of the file aside and unfolded himself from his sitting position on the floor, standing in favor of the bed. Hotel floors weren't all that comfortable - that hadn't changed in the 150-plus years he'd been around. "Run that by me again. I'm guessing you know the mystery chick Kiske's after." 

"That would be correct." 

"That's where you've been for the last two hours?" 

Testament nodded and lifted his chin, gazing at Sol. "She went underground when Justice was sealed in his prison five years ago. I don't know how she did it, but she escaped the notice of any law enforcement, bounty hunters, what have you." 

Anji coughed discreetly. "The company producing the Gears was fooling around with illegally obtained human test subjects right before and during the wars. That man in charge of the project had been intending to use the serum on humans in order to start modifying their genetic structure, but his prototype subject made himself scarce before he could start testing any of his theories. It's documented in the UN classified files - I have a connection in Geneva with a certain amount of top-secret clearance." 

Sol shrugged, his expression unreadable. Still, there was a prolonged silence until Testament cleared his throat. "I surmise it would be safe to assume that Kira was once human herself. In fact, she is one of the few human-type Gears I've seen that has the mark on her forehead." Most humans-turned Gears weren't marked because they hadn't initially belonged to the company. "I can only wonder how she came by it." 

"Good question." Badguy eyed him shrewdly. "Tell me something, Testament. Why're you suddenly being so helpful? I thought you had ethical issues over killing your own kind." 

"I still don't approve of your bloodthirstiness, Sol," he replied stiffly, "but that's beside the point. She is completely insane. Her mind is filled with nothing but shadows. Justice is dead and he shouldn't exist for any of us anymore, but he does for her. She claims that he speaks to her." 

"Like, hearing voices and all that crap?" 

"I'd imagine so. She's following what she thinks is some sort of divine calling." 

"Divine calling." Anji scratched his head. "She thinks she's on a mission from God?" 

"Insofar as Gears consider any religious obligations, I suppose you could say that. The bad news is what she's trying to do... I doubt you're going to like this, Sol." 

"Spill it." The bounty hunter's voice was as devoid of affect as his face. 

"Do the two words 'Justice's resurrection' strike any particular feeling in you?" 

The bounty hunter's chin snapped up sharply. "She wants to resurrect Justice?" _Jesus, not this shit again..._

Testament nodded. 

"You better not be shitting me." 

"I'm not." 

"Justice is deader than a doornail. No way in hell is he coming back." 

"She said that even though his body was dead, his spirit was still alive. I suppose that's quite possible, when you consider the fact that out of all of us he was the only one who managed to be fully self-aware." 

Testament's quiet reply caused a moment of profound silence. Gears weren't supposed to have souls, but Gears weren't supposed to be self-aware either. 

"Christ. She believes she can resurrect him?" 

"Apparently so." 

"This crazy bitch got a name?" 

"Kira. I forget her last name, but I seem to remember she was someone of note at the beginning of the twenty-second century before her transformation." 

"That's all you can tell me?" 

"I have a fair amount of gaps in my memory, Sol," Testament replied bluntly. "There isn't much I can recall about the Crusades, other than scant images and a few fragments of my childhood. A name or a face, here and there. Kira I remember vividly for various reasons, but I couldn't tell you what her last name was because she never told me. I'm not really certain that _she_ remembers anything."

Sol raised a brow. "'Various reasons,' huh? You've got some kind of history with her?"

"You could say that."

A pause, and then a malicious grin split the bounty hunter's features. "You were screwing her, weren't you?"

Testament's usual calm elegance deserted him as he sputtered in shock and outrage, his face turning a flagrant shade of red, but he made no move to deny the vulgar accusation Sol had leveled towards him. "What!? I did no such thing! And even if I.. it doesn't matter, that - that's none of your business!" Not to mention, completely uncalled for...

"I'll take that as a yes."

"Sol, when your name is Testament, then and only then will you have full access to the lurid details of my personal information." He had regained most of his composure, evident in the clipped, icy tones of his voice - although his face was still slightly crimson. "Until that day comes, kindly keep your damned mouth shut."

The hunter smirked.

With a great deal of effort the Second Lord Gear refrained from attempting to rearrange the hotel furniture in an effort to rip Sol's face from his skull. It was counterproductive, and he knew that the prototype was just trying to goad him into a fight. He wasn't going to let himself fall for it this time. "As I was about to say, the intelligence division of the United Nations would probably have a file on her. They kept extensive records during the Crusades on Justice and his upper-level entourage."

"Heh, good point." A pause followed the grudging admission. "Hm. I wonder if Kiske has access to UN files."

"Wouldn't someone there have recognized her from the composite drawing?" Anji argued, silently thankful for the abrupt change of subject. He was the only human in the room, and it made him feel distinctly like a field mouse stuck between two alley tomcats.

"Maybe, maybe not. Governments have this nasty habit of compiling files and then tucking them out of sight and out of mind. If Boy Wonder can get someone in Geneva to go looking for her I'm willing to bet she's listed in the archives somewhere."

"Are you going to go to the police station and antagonize him at this hour of the evening?"

"Why not? It ain't that late, and police stations're supposed to be open twenty-four hours. Might as well call the station and tell 'em to expect me." His voice was sardonic. "I'm sure Kiske'll be overcome with joy to see my face after so long, anyway."

Anji sighed ruefully - he'd been tired, too. Well, there went the idea of sleeping...

********************************

--LOCATION UNDISCLOSED--

Kira glared sullenly at the door, feeling the slow-banked heat of anger kindling in her veins as she growled various invectives under her breath.

Nothing had gone right. Nothing had worked out the way she'd hoped it would. She'd spent all this time working behind the scenes... five years in hiding, in fear of the humans and in a dreamy sort of panic when Master Justice had been murdered in the Lexicon by that prissy little bastard knight... then plotting, plotting... hoping to restore him and finish what he'd started. 

She remembered everything Testament had taught her - the rest of the blood rituals were those she had gained herself through painstaking research. Five years, forced to repress her instincts living among stinking, filthy humans, all to wait for him. And then killing to draw him out and bring him to her, once she'd heard he hadn't died in the tournament fiasco after all.

And after all her effort... all that grueling work... the bastard had gone soft.

_With that so-called "innocent Gear." You dare shove me aside for her... that pathetic little coward of a halfling..._

She couldn't stand it anymore. With a howl of animal rage the Gear snatched up the untouched sherry sitting on the table and hurled it at the wall. The crystal glass shattered against the solid surface as she screamed at it.

"You son of a bitch!!"

That wasn't enough to quell her blind rage. Not even close. Kira lunged for the table, upending it onto its face as she grabbed the other glass and literally slammed it into the underbelly of the wood. Gibbering and snarling the woman ground her fist - and then her open palm, when that failed to satisfy her - into the broken glass and the sharp splinters, slamming her now-mangled digits into the unrelenting surface over and over again. 

_Turning against me... against your master, your own people ...you BETRAYED us...!!_

She howled once more. The jagged edges were slicing into her flesh and her blood, a dark crimson, combined with the lighter and thinner red of the liquid from Kira's now-crushed glass. The spilt sherry coursed in rivulets over the wood and pooled on the nearby floor. 

Her chest heaved erratically as the first slivers of pain made themselves known. Though the injury itself was nothing to her - Gears had amazingly high pain thresholds - for some reason, the stinging of her broken flesh calmed her back into some semblance of sanity.

Kira recalled that brief glimpse into Testament's thoughts. She hadn't dared linger overlong; furthermore, she hadn't seen all that much. The Second Lord Gear had his own ways of concealing his true thoughts from those who attempted to plunder his mind, although those who used magic of a similar "wavelength" - certain types of Gear magic, for example - could occasionally break past. And he knew about her little specialties... probably he would have expected her to be reading him from the moment he walked in.

But he'd dropped his guard with that kiss. Long enough for her to see his companions, anyway.

An interesting pair of humans traveled with him - one was a tall man in tight white jeans, sporting a head of thick dark hair bound behind a metal headpiece of some kind. It was similar to what she wore when among humans. Another one who intended to harry her race into extinction... but something about his mind was a little odd. She didn't think he was exactly what he seemed, but it was impossible to tell for sure. Kira didn't care for capricious humans - the weak-minded and foolish ones were so much easier to prey upon.

_Best to leave him be, for now. I may have to deal with him at a later time._

She was more interested in the other one. He was an athletic though rather foppish young man with an Asian look about him. Nothing special about him otherwise; he was just another human and probably had a mind about like what she would expect. Humans were absurdly easy to bend, once you figured out what motivated them - that was the irritating part, as no one human was motivated by exactly the same thing. 

_Maybe..._

From what she could gather he was probably pliant enough. Reckless, too: one of those sorts who didn't always look before he leapt. And, he was searching for the creator of the Gears... driven by it, though not as much as the enigmatic one with the headband...

Her bruised and bleeding hand curled absently about the shards of glass as she knelt by the ruined piece of furniture, now lost in thought. It was worth investigating. Very much so.

_Hm... he might be more useful to me than Testament. How ironic..._

Kira always had a contingency plan when things went wrong.

She could probably pull off what she was beginning to have in mind - all of it was just a matter of pushing all the right buttons. And half the fun was figuring out just what she could push.

The best part was, no one would see it coming.

A feral smile tinged her lips. 

********************************

_**AUTHOR'S NOTES**: Ack! X_x As you can see, I am not dead. However, I have been rather ill. Anemia = huge, huge levels of SUCK. Try writing when you have no energy to do it. So this chapter is utterly craptastic, and for that I apologize. _

In more cheerful news: I'm getting my preordered copy of GGXX soon, so that cures all ills ^^ Now if only I could get the money to fix my PS2... -_-

Random crap. Whee.

- The title of this chapter comes from the translation of the kanji used to write Anji Mito's name.

- *MINOR SPOILER* Anji does know that Sol is a Gear. In one of his Guilty Gear X-Plus endings for Story Mode he confesses knowing the truth to Sol, who threatens to kill him if he tells anyone. And in an interlude with Ky he says "Do you really think that he's human?" Interesting. Makes me wonder just how he came by that information...

- I should note that it's extremely difficult to write an original character into a major role involving a world one didn't invent. Some people consider it something of a taboo in fanfiction, as a matter of fact. Obviously I have no problem with it as long as the author doesn't cross the line into (a) warping canonized facts beyond recognition or (b) creating a Mary Sue. Kira obviously is a figment of my overactive imagination, and yes, I love taking creative license muchly. BUT. I am merely following personal theories of mine on humans who received Gear augmentation in order to characterize her. None of it is intended to be taken as irrefutable fact. So for God's sake don't go to the GameFAQs forums and post any of this as such. ~.~ 

- I talk too damn much, in addition to being a detail whore. Go me. x_x


	6. Belladonna

**::chapter six - belladonna::**

  
************************

_"Sever the line to the guilty past,  
to the ones who brought us nothing  
Spoke of futures brave and proud  
and brought only hate and war.  
Lined the roads with hollow praise.  
Marked the land with paper statues.  
Shadows fell upon their ways  
And then there was nothing more."_

-- VNV Nation, "Solitude"

************************

  
--GLOBAL POLICE FORCE HEADQUARTERS: CENTRAL PARIS STATION--

Paris, like most other major European cities, had been ravaged by Gear attacks during the Crusades - though admittedly not as bad as it had places like Berlin. Some of the old buildings still stood more or less intact, such as the Notre Dame cathedral. A rare example to be sure, as the oldest structures dated back merely to the nineteenth century, nowadays.

The building that housed the GPF headquarters for the Central Paris district was one of those; a Georgian-style red brick affair. It was three stories high, and the western end made up the front facade although several and obviously more recent complexes had been added as the force had grown in size and the city had grown in need of a stable force of law and order.

To Sol Badguy's cynical eye it was just another building. Nothing really changed, despite the appearance of current events. It was just... always the same thing with people the world over. History repeated itself, just in different and often random combinations.

Surprisingly enough there wasn't too much activity, though the guard at the door was formidable-looking. Anji raised a brow at that.

"Security's a little tight, isn't it?"

"It usually is in the evenings. After dark's when all the loonies come out."

The three men strode up to the door. Testament hadn't bothered to cloak himself this time, as few people were out on the streets and his attire made it difficult to see him anyway. The policeman at the door narrowed his eyes at Sol, but let him pass without incident.

"They know you?" Anji asked.

"I'm in here often enough. I'm a freelance hunter - if I worked for these people Kiske would never stop stalking me."

"Oh." In other words, Sol's loyalties went to the highest bidder. Not exactly a mercenary per se, but...

"Stop right there."

The imperious command brought the trio to a halt, as did the rather large sword barring the corridor. A young man with short brown hair and a hard face scowled at Sol, his green eyes dark with hostility. "Who the hell do you think you are, showing your face around here?"

This time it was Testament's turn to raise a brow, while Anji's furrowed in confusion. Sol merely smirked. "Heh. Jean Passereau. You're still kissing Kiske's ass, I see."

"You haven't answered my question."

"I didn't know that Kiske was in the habit of leaving his brown-nosers around to bully civilians. I've got business with him, boy, and it doesn't concern you. Now get out of my way. Your investigation department's expecting me."

"No one sees Captain Kiske without getting through me first."

"Excuse me, officer," Testament cut in coolly, "but is your captain also in the habit of confiding in his gatekeeper?"

Passereau's face flushed at the scornful insult as he turned his attention on the pallid-faced man in his odd attire, flanking Sol's right. "How dare trash like you come in here and say such things?! I am nothing of the sort--"

"Better watch what you say to him, Passereau," Sol smirked. "He's a Gear, and we all know from the Crusades that Gears can get pretty excessive when they're irritated."

"You really believe I'll fall for a bluff, Badguy?"

The hunter growled, the first stirrings of annoyance darkening his face like a thundercloud. _Sanctimonious little prick._ "Save the pissing contest for another time, all right? I need to see your captain. Yesterday. So get out of my goddamn way already, or one of us will move you."

"Impossible," came the snapped reply. "Justice himself could not move me from--"

His words were cut off as if by a knife. Testament, who had taken the opportunity to approach the man while he was in the middle of his tirade, had suddenly hoisted the policeman about three feet into the air. His face was impassive as he held the Frenchman by his collar, tightening the material so that the man was uncannily close to facing suffocation.

Passereau gagged and coughed, grasping weakly at the hand that held him, but the Gear's grip remained firm. Anji could see the tendons outlined in Testament's forearm with the effort of lifting all that dead weight. He looked so delicate that it was easy to forget how strong he truly was. And despite the grim, remote expression on the Gear's face, his voice remained mild.

"Is something the matter, human? You look as though the wind's been taken out of your sails."

Passereau shook his head wildly. His face was turning red.

"I'm certain that as soon as I release you, you will proceed to tell me about your various law-enforcement connections in lurid detail, and you will likely threaten to have me arrested forthwith. Let me assure you, and cut past all the trouble you will go to in informing me as such, that I couldn't care less."

Anji glanced at them both, then cleared his throat and spoke rather amiably to the suspended man. "In light of the present circumstances, officer, I'd advise that you allow us to pass. If you agree, feel free to nod."

The response was an almost comically frantic nodding of the head. With that Testament pivoted on one heel and set the policeman down on his feet. Passareau glared at the three men sullenly as he placed a hand to his neck. He attempted to open his mouth in protest despite the warning, but quickly closed it under the force of Sol Badguy's impassive stare. Instead he retrieved his sword and stepped aside - apparently deciding that discretion was the better part of valor.

Sol snapped:

"Let's go."

"That wasn't really what I'd call diplomatic, Testament." Anji's stride as he continued down the hallway on Sol's left was as serene as though absolutely nothing had happened. "Still, well done. You have no idea how many times I've wanted to do that."

"Bureaucrats," came the disdainful reply. "Mere bullies hiding behind protocol."

"Hear, hear," Anji said dryly. "Still, I think Ky'll find that change of pace refreshing, as soon as he recovers from the stroke he's going to have when that guy tells him there's a Gear loose in the police station."

"Passereau can eat me." Sol gave a casual shrug, looking completely unperturbed by the entire business. Anji supposed he was probably more interested in the Gear/serial killer. "He always was a little ass-kisser. Plenty of those left over from the Crusades, too. Besides, most of those bastards would probably like to rip my head off and shit in my neck. You get used to it."

No introductions were needed; nor were there any more confrontations. The tawny-headed detective was waiting at his desk when Sol flung the door open on its aged hinges. A hard, hostile expression was etched on Ky's youthful face. Most likely he'd heard the commotion out in the hallway.

"Sol," he growled. Apparently Ky Kiske wasn't any happier to see the bounty hunter than Passereau had been.

"Stow it, Kiske. I don't have the time and neither do you." Sol untucked the bundle of copied reports from the police station and the city coroner's office, positioned his burden directly above the Frenchman's desk, and released it. It hit the surface with a headache-inducing thud that made the teacup on the edge rattle and teeter dangerously close to the edge, and Ky had to make a hasty motion to catch it. Fortunately Sol had thought to bind the reports in a rubber band for easier transport; otherwise they'd have scattered everywhere.

Ky shot his rival an ominous glare. "Do you _mind_, vulgarian?"

"Not at all." Ignoring all the NO SMOKING signs they'd seen since entering the station, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette.

"You are not going to smoke that in here."

"Try and stop me, boy." His face remained blank as he said it, but something about the note in his voice insinuated that should the Frenchman indeed call his bluff, Sol would gladly rearrange all his vertebrae. Ky glared a moment longer, but Sol didn't even look back before lighting up. With a sigh, he glanced at the other two men.

"Anji Mito. And Testament?" Ky raised a brow, bewildered gaze lingering upon the one person who possibly had more reason to hate Sol than he did. "Why are you here?"

"A temporary arrangement, Officer," Anji cut in, glancing at the other Gear, who remained silent. "It concerns that pile of paper Mr Badguy just dumped on your desk."

"What is all this?" Ky pulled the binding off the bundle of files and picked up the picture of the woman.

"Run a search on a woman with this description through all the UN files dating before 2175," Sol answered. "First name 'Kira', last unknown."

"Why should I?"

"Testament knows your killer _personally_." Sol's tone was deliberately insulting.

"If you don't shut your mouth, Sol, I'll be glad to shut it for you. Permanently."

"You're all empty promises."

"Enough," Ky snapped testily. "Who is this woman? A former government official?"

"A Gear."

"Files on the Gears are highly classified, Sol. I don't have that much clearance."

"Don't bullshit me, Kiske, you led the Seikishidan. I know you'd have clearance on World Court intelligence."

"I didn't say that I _didn't_ have clearance." Ky's voice was icy. He was struggling to remain civil as it was. "I meant that I only have permission to access certain files. All the information sent to the government on Gears is seen only by the UN's surveillance companies, then it's compiled and sent to Geneva. Everything we found out during the wars was locked away after Justice was sealed. Most of it is kept out of view unless I request the information for a specific purpose."

"That's a damn stupid way to work."

"They felt it was best after the Crusades ended that the information not be accessible to the public."

"In case people panicked?" Anji asked.

"Yes. The need was obvious after Dizzy's emergence."

Testament grunted from his corner, but still remained silent.

"So can you get the clearance or not?"

"I just told you, Sol. Not automatically. They put a restriction on the information after the tournament a year ago, said it was too volatile and that they didn't want a repeat of that incident." Ky's sapphire gaze intensified as it zeroed in on his rival. "Why are you so interested?"

"She's a Gear," Sol said patiently, as if Kiske were unbelieveably stupid. "She's also worth three hundred thousand bucks. And since we're playing twenty questions right now, why does it matter? It's in your best interest to catch the bitch if she's murdering humans, isn't it?"

A long-suffering sigh. "I'll make some telephone calls. But I can't guarantee that I can get the information right away. Or even tonight."

The bounty hunter folded his arms. "Then we'll have to keep trying, won't we?"

+ + + + + + + +

"You don't understand... yes... no... listen, I have been on hold for the past hour waiting for... I told you, this is Ky Kiske of the Global Police Force and I am filing a formal request for the release of information on Gears risk-rated Class A... no... If I had automatic clearance, I wouldn't have called..."

"This is ridiculous," Anji muttered, shifting uncomfortably in the seat he'd taken.

"You're telling me." Sol directed a glare towards the phone in Ky's hand that could have melted steel. "If I were there myself, there wouldn't be any of this 'I'll put you on hold' shit, that's for damn sure."

Ky put a hand over the receiver. "Please keep your voices down."

"What's the problem, Boy Wonder?" Sol dropped the third spent cigarette onto the floor, crushing it with his heel and ignoring the miniscule twitch that came to the corner of Ky's left eye as he saw it. "Best laid plans going to hell?"

"I don't know." The Frenchman shook his head, looking extremely confused and frustrated. "I've never had this much problem requesting information. I have all the clearance codes I need and I keep getting passed about from hand to hand."

"It would seem someone in Geneva wants to play a power game." Testament's voice was its usual soft murmur, but the statement itself carried enough weight such that volume was hardly necessary. The implication was clear.

Sol grunted. "Plenty of people in the World Court like to play power games. No surprise there."

"Uh... Sol?"

The bounty hunter glanced up. Anji Mito was shifting in his seat even more urgently. The look on his face was rather pained. "Yeah? What?"

"I... er, need to.. ah, relieve myself. Would you mind if I stepped out of the room for a few moments?"

"I don't give a damn. Just don't try to escape or I'll hunt you down and kick your sorry endangered ass. We have a deal, Mito."

"I couldn't go anywhere if I wanted to. You locked my weapons in the hotel room, remember? I'll be right back."

"Ten minutes. That's it. If you aren't back, I'm coming after you."

"All right, all right." The Japanese man stepped out of the room and shut the door discreetly behind him, taking a few deep breaths. He desperately needed to find the restroom - but he also needed tobacco-free air. He'd been trying to keep from coughing for the last hour. At least Sol'd let him out of his sight for a few moments; he'd been close to going stir-crazy for the last few hours. Anji hated restriction of his freedom more than anything in the world.

Briefly he entertained the notion of walking out and going back to the hotel, and maybe charming the receptionist into giving him the key so he could get his zessen back. After a moment, though, he let it drop. He wouldn't get that far before Sol decided to go after him, and the young politician had no doubt that Sol would give him the ass-kicking he'd promised.

The station's interior, he noted a few moments after walking out of the men's lavatory, was actually rather quiet. There were a few people in the lobby area, but not many; most of them were officers on duty, although a few civilians could be seen. 

Anji was about to turn away and walk back down the corridor to join the others when a flash of hunter green caught his eye. It was a woman who looked about his age, surely not older. That green he'd caught was the color of her daringly short sheath dress. Her long hair was very dark - it shone with violet highlights and was looped into an intricate series of braids within a matching silk kerchief, wrapped about her head. She was standing by the exit, looking somewhat bored.

Something about her was vaguely familiar, but Anji couldn't really say what it was. She was attractive, but that wasn't it.

_So go over and talk to her._

The thought seemed almost to be a sly, insinuated suggestion. Anji was fairly certain he didn't know her, but that thought nagged him nonetheless... Still, he couldn't see why it would be so unreasonable to go talk to her. If Sol wanted to come out and look for him, he'd just find him talking. Anji was very friendly. He liked talking to new people more than anything, and he especially liked talking if those new people happened to be pretty girls.

Before he could resolve his mind either way, the woman glanced up, caught his eye, and lifted her hand in a tiny little wave. Her smile was definitely coy. Anji smiled back politely, nodding, and she motioned him over to the door. With a shrug he found himself sauntering towards her, grinning like a fool.

"Hi," she said, smiling. Her eyes were a strange, exotic shade of amber. Probably contact lenses.

"Evening, miss," he replied - a quick glance at her left hand revealed that it was devoid of rings. "I'm... ah, sorry if I was staring."

"Oh, that's all right!" A tiny chuckle escaped her as she shook her head a bit. Some sort of unnameable perfume wafted unhurriedly in his direction. "I get that a lot, actually. But I was staring myself. You're not bad-looking."

"Oh. Um..." Anji flushed a little, and briefly thought of Baiken. She probably would be none too happy to see this scene. Or maybe she wouldn't care. Four months of having known her, in any sense, and he still couldn't figure her out--

The thought seemed to trail off. In fact, it seemed downright unimportant in the face of that look this woman was giving him. Artless, but... seductive, somehow. Baiken went back to a corner of his mind, like dust swept under a rug and immediately forgotten.

"So... what brings you here?"

"This and that," she said, and giggled again. "I'm a... government representative. We're trying to compile information on that man who created the Gears, and so far we're getting a healthy file on him..."

If Anji were a dog, his ears would have perked up.

"--but there's still a few people we need to talk to. We think the Gear general Testament might know something, maybe... and the girl Dizzy. Many others." She laughed. "It's a tangled web. I figured that the police station would be the best source of information to start, and then I could go from there..."

"I can imagine." He glanced back in the direction of the corridor leading to Kiske's office. Sol didn't appear, and so he turned his attention back to the woman and leaned towards her in a conspiratorial fashion. What the hell, why not. He was bored, and sick of being treated like a child because he'd had the bad luck to get caught.

"I'm... acquainted with Testament, so if you want to talk to him, I might be able to arrange it..." Anji caught himself and coughed. "Uh, I'm not sure I should have told you that, but--"

"Oh, you know Testament?" She interrupted him, but her voice remained mild, as if his revelation didn't surprise her in the least. "What a coincidence... I hadn't realized he was in Paris."

"Do you know him too?" He was surprised. Testament didn't exactly seem like a social butterfly...

"Oh, yes, quite well. Perhaps you could... tell me more, if we stepped outside for a little while?" She placed a hand on his elbow. "Even in places like this the walls have ears."

"Outside?" he echoed, frowning a bit. "Um... well, they're both here in the station... and I promised them I wouldn't go wandering off--"

"I'll only take a few moments of your time. What's the harm?"

He had to admit that she had a point. What _would_ be the harm? It wouldn't take ten minutes, surely.. and if in the meantime he could get information from her in return, it'd be a fair exchange. She might even know something about this Gear woman who Sol was trying to find...

A front was beginning to pass through the city; the wind had picked up considerably and there was the slightest biting chill on its edge. Still, it was nothing unbearable, and Anji nodded to the security as he and the young woman opened the doors and made their way down the marble steps. He blinked as he realized that they were steadily walking away from the station, and although he supposed it was to ensure that no one would eavesdrop, he couldn't help but feel the slightest bit uneasy nevertheless.

When he looked up and saw that they were by now almost a block away from the station and rounding the corner, he stopped, shaking his head. He'd already broken his promise not to leave the station, and if Sol found him out here... "I think we've gone far enough for no one to hear us, don't you?"

The only reply he received was the rather unpleasant sensation of a blunt object slamming into the back of his head.

Anji Mito crumpled to the ground as silently as an unfolding sheet; the blow had instantly knocked him senseless. No alarm was raised from the direction of the police station, and they were far enough out of the light and line of vision to ensure that things would stay that way. For the time being, at least.

Kira's smile hadn't faded as her feral gaze traveled from the unconscious human to the heavy rock she'd tucked in her purse before she arrived at the station. She'd had to pull her attack short at the last second. Humans were absurdly fragile, and after all, she didn't want to kill him.

Not right now, anyway.

She knelt down and slipped her arms beneath his torso and his knees, lifting him off the pavement. Not only fragile, but ridiculously sensitive to mental suggestion. All she'd had to do was slip that little nudge into his head when he saw her, and he'd done the rest on his own. Kira had thought it might be more difficult, but apparently that worry had been over nothing.

_Hurry. Testament and that bounty hunter will come looking for him soon, and a woman who can carry a man this size is going to look suspicious. Get off the streets._

The last thing she needed was to be foiled by stupid mistakes.

Without pause she slipped into the back streets and faded from sight... carrying the unconscious Anji as though she were a bridegroom about to cross a hotel room threshold.

  
*******************************

  
**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** Wow, it's been a month since the last update. o_o;; Hopefully things'll be slowing down a little bit; I'm involved in an opera, I have a lead role, so I haven't been able to update this like I had hoped I would. I should also mention that Guilty Gear X2 is the nectar of the gods. Sweet, sweet story mode, how do I love thee. *.* I've been more or less keeping up with the stories in this section, although I haven't reviewed many of them...

So the plot thickens, no? :D Hopefully the next one won't take me a month to put up here. I would update more often, except I have this ambition to get out of college in the year and a half I promised my folks. Instead of being stuck here till I'm like, y'know, fifty or something.

Oh, and Kaiser: Nicely written new chapter. You've got yourself quite the following now! I do hope you aren't planning to steal my Justice-thunder though - otherwise I shall have to feed you to Kira, and you don't want that ^_~ Also, get May and Dizzy back together already, the suspense is killing me! 


	7. Fugitive

**::chapter seven - fugitive::**

  
++++++++++++++++++++++++ __

"Comprehend the ways of man  
and under a flag we salute or burn  
there is blood on both shores.  
With hardened mind I travelled,  
with hardened heart I conquered  
a freedom so ironic, so despicable, so hypocritical." 

--VNV Nation, "Serial Killer" 

++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

  
**--THE MAYSHIP--**

  
"Just like that?" 

Dizzy watched Johnny as he piloted the ship. Without being aware of it, her heightened senses were absorbing every last detail of his actions... careful to memorize everything including his stance. She still couldn't believe he was actually entrusting her with flying the ship by herself. 

"That's right, you just have to hold her steady. Won't always be easy - in bad weather you can get some strong air currents and if you aren't careful she'll get fouled up." Johnny nodded and motioned to her, smiling. "Come here, Dizzy, and put your hands on the wheel." 

Hesitantly she stretched her hands forward, crimson eyes uncertain, until she felt smooth grain beneath her fingertips. 

"That's it, Dizzy... go on, take the wheel. She won't bite you." 

Digits clasped tighter about the helm, and their owner drew forward - driven by an encouraging pat on the shoulder from the ship captain. The Gear swallowed a bit, and mimicked his actions, keeping the tilt of the wheel at the same angle as she had seen Johnny do it. 

"Good! See, it's not so hard, is it?" 

Dizzy flushed a little at the captain's roguish grin. One of her rare, hesitant smiles flickered into life across her youthful face. He trusted her. After a scant few weeks, he trusted her. Trust wasn't something she was used to receiving from humans either... "I... guess not." 

Johnny chuckled. "That's good, because all my crewmembers are required to learn how to pilot." 

"Um... isn't April the one who usually does it? Besides you, Mr. Johnny?" 

"Yeah, but if there's an emergency and neither one of us can pilot for some reason, it's good to know. Besides, we get tired every now and then, too." 

"O-oh." 

A sudden shudder racked the airship. Dizzy yelped as it threw her partially off-balance and she nearly let go of the rudder, feeling the familiar surge of her guardians in response to her alarm. She quickly grasped the wheel again, gritting her teeth and trying to remain in control of herself. 

_[[Danger!]]_

The word was full of anger and alarm, and again there was that surging sensation as her wings threatened to take their alternate forms. Their owner responded with an almost frantic cry in the privacy of their shared awareness. 

_No, Necro! It's okay. I'm all right. No danger. No danger._

There was hesitation, and then he returned to his previous state of dormancy. Her wings fluttered briefly, a light rustling of feathers making wisps of sound in her keen ears... but nothing else happened. Dizzy felt unspeakably relieved - and quite surprised. That was the first time she could remember being able to suppress Necro without a struggle. 

_Maybe I'm getting stronger now,_ she thought hopefully. 

The ship was still shuddering beneath her feet. Johnny was saying something, and she finally tuned back in to what he was trying to tell her. "--turbulence. You'll just have to steer with the air current instead of going against it." He cast her an odd glance, as though he weren't sure she was listening. Dizzy tried to appear as though she'd been paying attention the entire time. 

"Yes, sir." 

"I'll show you what to do. Turn the wheel to starboard a few degrees." 

Starboard. That meant to the right. 

She obeyed him, her hands now trembling with stress as she braced her feet and tugged the wheel into the current. As the body of the ship made the adjustment, the shimmer disappeared from the sleek hull and only the smooth purr of the engines remained. 

"There you go. Hey, that's excellent work! Another day or so of this and you'll be fine by yourself." He gave her a rather fatherly pat on the shoulder. "If you want, you can go on ahead to the cafeteria and eat something. I'll take over here." 

"Um... okay..." 

"Who's cooking tonight?" 

"June, I think." 

"Ah! Wonderful." A grin, not flirtatious but full of anticipation, spread across his roguishly handsome face. "I hope it's rump roast. Leap's taught her well." He took the wheel again, and seemed to consider something before he spoke again. "I'm not just being nice, Dizzy. You're doing a great job." 

"You.. you think so?" 

"Sure. I'm proud of you - you're picking all this up really quickly. You'd probably make a good airship pilot, someday." 

Dizzy felt her lips stretching into a smile, despite herself, and there was heat in her cheeks. No human had ever complimented her before. "I... thank you..." 

"Anytime." He winked at her, flashing her that charming grin, and she colored again. She wasn't sure how to take all this; she hadn't been around humans long enough to really understand how they behaved. Johnny, sensing that Dizzy didn't know how to react to his teasing, patted her on the shoulder. "Go eat." 

The Gear hurried towards the door, but paused briefly as her hand rested on the knob. She had meant to say something else, but her usual timid nature took over once more and she could only repeat herself. "...thank you, Mr. Johnny." 

"You can just call me Johnny, you know. I'd prefer it, actually." His eyes twinkled; he hadn't missed the surprised, grateful happiness in her face as she'd accepted his compliment - though he knew full well she was thanking him for more than that, now. "And you're very welcome." 

"Yes." Dizzy nodded, the smile trembling on her lips briefly before she stepped into the corridor and shut the door behind her. Cheeks still slightly pink, she hurried towards the scent of cooking food. Her steps felt lighter than they'd ever been. 

  
******** 

  
**--GLOBAL POLICE FORCE HEADQUARTERS, CENTRAL PARIS STATION-- **

  
"This is utterly ridiculous!" Ky Kiske exploded, scowling at the phone - after he'd placed a hand over the mouthpiece, of course. 

"What? Don't tell me you were expecting something different." Sol leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed in a display of indifference... but any more observant individual could easily see the intensity in that dual-toned gaze. He wanted that bounty, but he couldn't go bring her in without the name to match the face. 

_What do you care? It's not like money does you any good._

This from that eerie calm voice in the very back of his mind... that last remnant of his old self which still flickered weakly to life every now and then. Sol knew who it was, and detested him - for various reasons, some obvious and some not-so-obvious. 

_Fuck off. No one asked you._ His silent reply was appropriately nasty and abrupt. Usually it worked enough so that he had comfortable silence in his head once more. 

_Vulgar as always._ There would have been a sigh after this, probably, if consciences could sigh. _And you're getting soft, you know. You aren't paying attention, and in this case losing focus could be a disaster._

"What the hell're you talking about?" Sol muttered under his breath, then abruptly dropped the argument when he saw the French swordsman casting him an odd look. Christ, he'd been arguing with himself. Another few instances of that and he'd end up being as crazy as Testament. 

"I didn't think they'd actually--" Ky's gaze suddenly regained an intensity of its own as he cut off in midsentence, uncovering the mouthpiece of the telephone. "Yes, I'm still here. What? I have clearance to access the files? Thank you." 

"It's about time." 

He ignored that and went back to the phone. "Yes. I need you to search the archives for a woman with--" he glanced at the composite drawing, "--black hair, gold eyes, about... five feet eight inches tall, Caucasian in appearance. She goes by the name Kira. ...yes, I'll wait." 

Speaking of waiting... Something seemed to stir in the back of Testament's mind, a nagging reminder that there was something important, something he'd forgotten. He couldn't for the life of him think what it might be, but-- 

Almost as if on cue he was cut off by an irritated growl. "Mito sure is taking a long-ass time in there. Did he fall in or something...?" 

Testament glanced at him. "He said he'd be back in five minutes, correct?" 

"Yeah, that was fifteen minutes ago..." The bounty hunter's scowl deepened. "...he better not have--" 

With that he was out the door. 

"Wait!" Ky hissed, his hand flying back to the mouthpiece again. "Where is he going?" 

"I don't know. Give us a moment." Testament was out the door behind him, long stride hasty and brisk as he started to catch up with Sol... but that same uneasy feeling from a moment ago was quickly stealing over him again, creeping up his spinal column. He could now sense some kind of residual, _familiar_ energy in the air. It was a bit like being in close proximity to a place that had been recently struck by lightning: feeling the air full of dry static, stinking of burnt ozone. 

As if the sensation itself had summoned her, Kira's voice leapt back into his mind, smug and dark with her kept secrets. 

_"Humans can be _so_ rash..."_

Sol Badguy was standing motionless at the entrance to the men's bathroom, door flung wide open. His eyes were fixated on a cracked and stained urinal along the adjacent wall, but he looked as though he were more than willing to rip something apart with his bare hands. As for the lavatory itself, there was no sign that anyone was inside. Somewhere, a leaking sink faucet made a soft dripping noise as water met its porcelain surface in a constant though maddening rhythm. 

"Jesus fucking Christ, he skipped out on me. I'm gonna twist his fruity ass into a pretzel when I catch up with him." 

Testament didn't wait. He turned on his heel and marched out of the lavatory into the lobby, ignoring the surprise and irritation of the humans within. Eyes fell shut as he stopped in the middle of the room. Gear magic, like any magic, caused noise, and any user of it had the ability to sense it. Like Sol, he always knew when a Gear had used its power in any given place. Always. 

But there was nothing. Not even a residual hum of dweomer that could possibly give him a hint. Maybe the human really had made good on his escape...? 

_No._

The single word was surprisingly calm, and held the ring of truth. As much as he distrusted humans, he was slowly starting to understand that not all of them were precisely the same in nature - and Testament knew Anji Mito well enough to convince him that the wanderer wasn't the sort of a man to go back upon his word. Besides, Sol's threat had been more than just a bluff. Mito was rash, but he wasn't that much of a fool. 

_So if he didn't escape, then Kira must have him. But how...? There's nothing to indicate she was even here--_

Sol was yanking the front door open, his brusque voice snapping something at the guards outside before he whirled about and slammed the door behind him. "He left, all right. They said he was with a black-haired chick dressed in green, had golden eyes..." 

Testament's eyes fluttered open and he stared at Badguy with an expression that bespoke plain realization. Without a word he turned on his heel and strode swiftly towards Kiske's office, not bothering to make sure he was followed. 

The Frenchman was replacing the phone on its hook, his face a bright mask of triumph. "They have her. All we have to do is wait for the fax to come through. She was on the top files as being MIA - they had the pictures of all the mid- to high-level magic using models on file just in case some of them had somehow retained any sentience, and... what's the matter?" He blinked, his enthusiasm dampening as he beheld the Gear's grim expression. "Testament?" 

His reply was rasped in two words: 

"It's Mito. He's gone." 

"Gone? Did he get tired of waiting?" 

"No," Testament said. "I don't think so." 

******** 

**--UNDISCLOSED-- **

  
It was dark and his head swam through a miasma of pain. 

_D... doko wa--_

"Guess I didn't kill you after all. How are you feeling?" 

The voice was a familiar one, laden with sardonic amusement which implied that its owner had intended the question in sarcasm and nothing more. Anji Mito blinked, lashes fluttering furiously as his vision seemed to swim in a kaleidoscope of indechiperable colors and shapes. His head ached horribly, and a thick tuft of his dark hair felt as though it had been tacked to the side of his face. 

_Quite frankly, my dear, I feel like shit._

"Come on, come on! Aren't you going to say something? I went to all that trouble..." 

A few more blinks cleared his vision, though his temples still ached miserably. There before him stood the woman who had led him away from the police station. She looked markedly different now, however. Her long hair was violet-black, and her cold eyes flashed with a wildness that he found disquieting... all the more so for the almost-ridiculous good humor in their depths. 

"I'm guessing that you would be Kira." With difficulty he kept his voice light, even casual, as he tugged once more at the metal hasps about his wrists. No reinforced steel this time; this felt heavy. Iron, maybe, or some kind of alloy. He seemed to be suspended above a floor and from the faint echo in his ears the room was probably a large one without carpeting. Exactly where he was, though, he couldn't say. 

_I've escaped one captor for another._

He might have laughed out loud at the sheer irony if the situation weren't so grave. 

"Very good!" She said it in the tone of voice an experienced schoolteacher might have reserved for very young children. "So Testament's told you all about me, has he?" 

"He said enough," Mito replied. He knew he should probably be frightened, but he couldn't work up the fear; he didn't have anything to lose as it stood. If it weren't for the bonds holding him back, he'd be able to take her on easily, even without his Zessen. "I think you should probably know that killing me would be a bad idea. I've got two friends who're probably missing me as we speak." Well, that was an exaggeration, but still... two people who'd be out looking for him. Surely they'd have missed him by now. 

The woman snorted delicately and leaned forward, her lips twisting into a derisive smirk that he found eerily similar to Sol Badguy's. "If I wanted to kill you, I'd have done it by now..." 

She pulled off the kerchief still covering her head. Anji's eyes narrowed as his eyes fell upon the five-tongued symbol emblazoned on her otherwise unblemished forehead. It carried a faint, sullen glow, fragments of light twisting within the confines of the mark. Outward evidence of her power. 

"Testament said you were a Gear. I should have known, I guess." 

"Yes, you should have, shouldn't you?" Her full mouth drew into a mock pout. "How sad for you." 

"Who are you? Who's he to you?" 

"It's not _that_ important, is it?" Another beatific grin blossomed over her face. "Besides, you won't care what he is to me, in a few moments. I do have use for you, human... but by the time I'm through you might just wish I had killed you..." 

Gaze unwavering, Anji's voice took on the casual arrogance he normally reserved for scoping out a potential fight. "Why? Why are you doing all this if you just want to get Testament back? That is what you want, right? You might want toforget about that - I doubt he's interested." 

Kira's eyes flashed dangerously, and he realized he had struck a chord somehow. Not a favorable one either, if the tight, glacial expression spreading across her face was a reliable indication. "That's not for you to know. Testament needs to find out just where his place is. He's been ensnared and led astray, and once your part is played I'm going to make sure that he'll come back to us. We'll help him find his real self again." 

"Led astray..?" Anji really had no idea what the woman was rambling about. He did, however, realize now that she was quite a few cards short of playing with a full deck, and that filled him with a deep-seated unease. It started to occur to him through the fog of adrenaline clouding his brain that provoking her was not a good idea. 

"By _her_." She fairly spat the words, her voice filled a venom that it hadn't harbored even when addressing him. The Japanese man blinked, more than slightly startled at the hatred thrumming in her alto tones. "That creature with the blue hair and the wings, the little coward he found hiding out in that goddamn forest playing with the squirrels. She's poisoned his mind against me and against our master. He's gone soft because of her..." 

Anji started to laugh. He couldn't help it. He just couldn't. Adneraline surged through his veins like a flood. 

"Finding something amusing, human?" Kira's voice was as soft as velvet, but the bloodlust glittered dangerously in her eyes. He saw it, and replied anyway - a taunting smirk playing across his lips as he spoke. 

"You're jealous." 

The vicious slap that followed his reply was more of a punch. There was so much sheer brute power behind the blow that it might have dislocated Anji's jaw, had it been in just the right place. His neck snapped violently to his left with the momentum. The ensuing echo from the slap itself was sharp and angry, crackling vituperously against the walls with the fervor of a gunshot. Anji, gasping and stunned by the blow, tried to listen to the resonance of the sound. They were in a large space somewhere. Probably a warehouse. 

His thought was immediately cut off as a hand grasped his sore jaw, talons extending and digging into his flesh. He grunted, trying to wrench free of the crushing grip, but Kira was relentless. She yanked him brutally forward, eyes blazing with ire, pupils elongating and narrowing to the diamond slits of a wild animal. The thin veneer of humanity she wore like a ragged cloak dropped away - he had awakened the dormant monster beneath. 

The sullen glow flickered, flaring briefly, and Anji finally knew fear. His mouth felt as dry as a salt flat and his heart triphammered like a wild bird's beating wings in the confines of his ribcage. In his ears it sounded horrendously loud. She wanted to kill him... was perhaps only inches from doing it, despite her earlier remark in passing. 

"You worthless piece of filth," she spat. Saliva sprayed across his cheeks and spectacles in minute droplets. That, however, was nothing compared to the sting of her talons carving bloody valleys into his flesh. Mito could feel something warm and wet trickling down his jaw. "I've killed your kind for less." 

"I thought you said you weren't going to kill me." 

The Gear paused at that; her hand fell away from his face and she took a couple of steps away from him. Her footsteps seemed oddly light, even casual. Kira studied him, and as she did the fury in her eyes suddenly died back to a low simmer. Her otherwise pretty face, which had been metamorphosed by her rage, settled back into its previous mask of demonic joviality. 

"Why, you're absolutely right. I did say that, didn't I?" She tittered a bit too loudly as she studied him through hooded golden eyes that were bright with twisted mirth. A disturbing idea came to him then: that expression might have been quite seductive if not for the fact that she was hopelessly insane. "Thank you for reminding me. I have _such_ an awful temper - I'm afraid I tend to forget things when I'm out of sorts." 

Almost as an afterthought she lifted her fingers to her lips and lazily licked the crimson stains on them away as if she were savoring the remains of a particularly delectable evening meal. Anji, no longer too mindful of the stinging pain from his lacerated cheeks, drew away despite himself. Her extreme mood swings were much more unsettling than her casual threats. 

Anji's sudden hunch that Testament himself might well have behaved exactly like this when he was under Justice's control did nothing to quell his apprehension. 

"I guess I'll have to make good on that little promise of mine," she pouted momentarily, before brightening. "So that means we get to start! I think it does, doesn't it?" 

"Start what?" he asked warily, eyes darting over her face. 

Kira leaned towards him, and the slow wicked grin spread like acid across her face. Combined with those wild eyes, it was like looking into a window of hell itself. His heart began to pound again, and this time it was not with adrenaline. 

His body jerked in surprise as the warmth of her hands descended upon his cheekbones... talons curling possessively about his still-bleeding jaw. _What's she..._

Anji tried to lurch backwards but failed. Tried to wrench his gaze away from those awful eyes with their deadly promise - but he could only stare helplessly into the feline slits of her pupils and wonder what lay behind those golden orbs. 

When the Gear spoke again, it was in a low, triumphant hiss. 

"Let's just see what we have to work with in here, shall we...?" 

At first there was nothing. Absolutely nothing... then a tightening about his temples, as if an unseen hand was constricting it with a band. It tingled and burned along his skin, and the shock of it made him gasp. Even afterwards he would never be able to describe it - it was a violation of the most intimate kind, but even rape was the wrong word for it. His memories were like a book she had stolen from a hidden shelf and now pillaged for her own amusement. 

What made it so terrifying was that he was not pulling thoughts to the conscious surface - she was. Images of his childhood, of various fights, of Baiken... they all sped forth in a blinding flash, an out-of-control rollercoaster with this madwoman at the switch. A wordless, thoughtless horror, akin to blind panic, stole over him. His stomach seemed to tie himself in knots as he recoiled from her invasion. 

_My mind... she's reading my mind..._

He'd heard Testament was capable of doing this too, in his own subtle ways. But this was anything but subtle, and he knew that she fully intended it to be that way. 

Kira's grin widened as the young man began to struggle against her hands, eyes huge with a fear he couldn't name. Anji Mito was used to fights he could see, but this... 

How did you fight an opponent who invaded your mind...? 

"Stop it," he gasped, trying once more to twist free from the crushing grip of those hands. He felt like an animal caught in a snare. 

"Did I strike a nerve?" she taunted. Those merciless eyes still danced gleefully; she was enjoying herself. This was going to be a very long night. "What happened to all that 'courage' of yours, eh?" 

He bared his teeth at her, tugging forcibly at his bonds once again. It was a wasted effort, but it served to mask his growing fear. Sweat trickled into his eyes again, blurring his vision. She laughed at him, a light girlish sound even with the note of mockery in it, and plucked his glasses from his face. Everything around him was reduced to smears of color and light. And shadow. 

"I believe I'm going to enjoy this," she said sweetly, and replaced her palms against his temples this time. Her fingers entwined in his thick hair, and he felt a faint flicker of disgust as her breath became ragged, excited... almost as if she found the notion of torture arousing. 

"Good for you," Anji retorted between clenched teeth. 

Without warning, his world went dark. 

  
************************** 

**AUTHOR'S NOTES**

OMGWTF IT'S AN UPDATE. o_o And not a very good one, I'm afraid. -_- *sigh* 

Writer's block sucks the big one. I don't recommend it... anyway, I've also been immersed in the Suikoden fandom lately - that might be contributing to the incredible lag between updates. *coughs nervously* 

Right, so... I'll get off my lazy arse and try to start writing more regular installments. My apologies... To those of you who haven't read this before, um, welcome! :D There might be a few confusing things in here since I wrote it to correspond with GGX Plus's storyline and at the time there was a lot of currently-official info that hadn't been released yet. So you might see indiscrepancies here and there. I'm trying to modify some of the older chapters, so the edited version might be reposted later. 

To those of you who've been waiting on me... yikes. @_@ I'm really, really sorry to have left things on a cliffhanger. And despite the general craptasticness of this chapter, there's another one waiting. Stay tuned! ...or something like that. 


End file.
